On March 28, 1989 Russian ground controllers lost their contact with their spaceship which was circling around Phobos, and taking some exclusive pictures of Martian moon Phobos. Many astronauts and space experts believe that Phobos monolith is an alien object which should never be there on Phobos. However, in 2011, Russia will again try to put another spacecraft on Phobos to take some exclusive pictures of Martian moon and even to find answers about the existence of Phobos monolith. Currently, Phobos circles around Mars every seven hours and the monolith circles around as well. The new Russian spaceship that will go to Phobos will also bring in some samples of the rock which will help experts to determine more about Phobos monolith. Below are some screenshots from the video.

Alignment of Earth and Jupiter as seen from Mars

Because Jupiter is over 5 times farther from the Sun than Earth, two different exposures were needed to image the two planets. The composite has been highly contrast-enhanced and “colorized” to show both planets and their satellites. The MGS MOC high resolution camera only takes grayscale (black-and-white) images; the color was derived from Mariner 10 and Cassini pictures of Earth/Moon and Jupiter, respectively.

Earth/Moon: This is the first image of Earth ever taken from another planet that actually shows our home as a planetary disk. Because Earth and the Moon are closer to the Sun than Mars, they exhibit phases, just as the Moon, Venus, and Mercury do when viewed from Earth. As seen from Mars by MGS on 8 May 2003 at 13:00 GMT (6:00 AM PDT), Earth and the Moon appeared in the evening sky. The MOC Earth/Moon image has been specially processed to allow both Earth (with an apparent magnitude of -2.5) and the much darker Moon (with an apparent magnitude of +0.9) to be visible together. The bright area at the top of the image of Earth is cloud cover over central and eastern North America. Below that, a darker area includes Central America and the Gulf of Mexico. The bright feature near the center-right of the crescent Earth consists of clouds over northern South America. The image also shows the Earth-facing hemisphere of the Moon, since the Moon was on the far side of Earth as viewed from Mars. The slightly lighter tone of the lower portion of the image of the Moon results from the large and conspicuous ray system associated with the crater Tycho.

Jupiter/Galilean Satellites: When Galileo first turned his telescope toward Jupiter four centuries ago, he saw that the giant planet had four large satellites, or moons. These, the largest of dozens of moons that orbit Jupiter, later became known as the Galilean satellites. The larger two, Callisto and Ganymede, are roughly the size of the planet Mercury; the smallest, Io and Europa, are approximately the size of Earth’s Moon. This MGS MOC image, obtained from Mars orbit on 8 May 2003, shows Jupiter and three of the four Galilean satellites: Callisto, Ganymede, and Europa. At the time, Io was behind Jupiter as seen from Mars, and Jupiter’s giant red spot had rotated out of view. This image has been specially processed to show both Jupiter and its satellites, since Jupiter, at an apparent magnitude of -1.8, was much brighter than the three satellites.

Ultimately, to answer the question What does Earth, Jupiter and their moons, look like when viewed from Mars? Mosaiced together, the images are shown below | Click to Enlarge :O

Source: MSSS

This photo shows the martian north polar ice cap with layers of water ice and dust for the first time in perspective view. Here we see cliffs that are almost two kilometres high, and the dark material in the caldera-like structures and dune fields could be volcanic ash. Mars Express also saw fields of volcanic cones, some up to 600 metres high. They appear to indicate very recent volcanic activity. The question remains, is it ongoing activity?

Echus Chasma is the source region of the Kasei Valles channel. This perspective image was taken by Mars Express during orbit 97. It shows that liquid water was present on the surface of Mars thousands of millions of years ago. Gigantic waterfalls poured over the 4000-metre high cliffs, and fed a lake in the valley. Later, when the planet became cooler, the lakes froze and glaciers formed, carving the giant Kasei Valles.

The image above is Kasei Valles, one of the largest outflow channels on Mars, and contains a lot of evidence for glacial and fluvial activity over much of the planet’s history. Kasei Valles has been imaged before by the HRSC during orbit 61 from an altitude of 272 kilometres. These images are located about 29° North and 300° East.

The scour marks in the valley, shown in the image on the left, are most likely due to glacial erosion than by water erosion. This is contrary to what was previously thought. The glacier that caused this valley was fed by water from the Echus Chasma region, which was driven out from underneath the surface by volcanic activity. Water was released by heating from volcanic activity in the channel floor as relatively recently as 20 million years ago.

The crater with ice disc is on the Vastitas Borealis, a broad plain that covers much of Mars’s far northern latitudes. The crater is 35 km wide, with a maximum depth of about 2 km. The image was taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera on European Space Agency (ESA) Mars Express.

Scientists believe the water-ice is present all year round because the temperature and pressure are not sufficient to allow it to change states and vaporise into the atmosphere. It is not frozen carbon dioxide, because this type of ice had already disappeared from the north polar cap by the time this image was taken.

Source: European Space Agency Flickr

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Photo Credit: Imgur via NASA

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