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See the original image at apod.nasa.gov

Flying Over the Columbia Hills of Mars

apod.nasa.gov — Combining terrain data from the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft (now dormant) with information about the robotic Spirit rover currently rolling across Mars has resulted in a digital movie that shows what a flight over the Columbia Hills might look like.

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  • bobslt, on 05/20/2008, -0/+8wow it was my first fly on mars. it was great.
  • DougUpndown, on 05/20/2008, -9/+1Did you see Starbucks?
  • k7jeb, on 05/20/2008, -0/+23Carl Sagan was right, Mars is now a *place* to us, and this flash animation was like a stroll through that place.
  • cybercalculi, on 05/20/2008, -0/+8Great! Looking forward to Phoenix landing on the mars this Sunday. The details and the count-down can be seen here: http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/
    • jjb123, on 05/20/2008, -0/+3Thanks for the reminder, I almost forgot. Can't wait for some vids.
  • gordoncam1, on 05/20/2008, -0/+5A million years from now will this fly over area be covered with trees, grass and lakes? This area might be an international park with a statue of a little robot at the front gate.
    • maybeishould, on 05/20/2008, -0/+2More like 200 years from now.
    • novenator, on 05/20/2008, -1/+2Unfortunately, with no spinning core to generate a magnetosphere (ie. the thing that shields planets from the radioactive solar wind), any terraforming of Mars will not happen. The life that likely existed there in the past is a distant memory, never to return.
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_magnetic_fi ...
      • Subliminational, on 05/20/2008, -0/+3We'll just have to bioengineer some radiation resistance into humans I guess.
  • deeboe, on 05/20/2008, -0/+5Is it just me, or is APOD getting cooler every day?
    • phate2292, on 05/20/2008, -0/+0definitely one of my favorite day-to-day sites
  • ubernoggin, on 05/20/2008, -0/+6Very cool. Could have used running altitude and airspeed data to help visualize the scale of what we are looking at.
  • Lynnwood, on 05/20/2008, -1/+0Followed the cybercalculi link to the Phoenix Mars Mission web site - added to my favorites to track the landing next week.
  • JulyZerg, on 05/20/2008, -0/+5Now it's Astronomy Movie of the Day.
  • BQ27, on 05/20/2008, -0/+4Amazing, Way cool!
  • dougellison, on 05/20/2008, -2/+5Glad you guys like it - there are high def versions of this, and one for the other rover - here : http://planetary.org/blog/article/00001423/ - I'll drop a blog entry on how they're done later!
  • freqk, on 05/20/2008, -5/+6Keep me at +1
    (Reverse psychology, digg me down.)
    • mikesbaker, on 05/20/2008, -1/+1this meme sure is getting old fast
  • aserer511, on 05/20/2008, -0/+1columbia hills? I knew harlem was a whole 'nother planet!
  • DrLeePhD, on 05/20/2008, -0/+3hey look, it's google-mars streetview!
  • Borgcube636, on 05/20/2008, -0/+2I'm learning to have lucid dreams and out-of-body experiences more often - once I get better at them I'll go to Mars and fly around
    • Niightwitch, on 05/20/2008, -0/+1Of course you are.
    • venuspcs, on 05/20/2008, -0/+1Mars is not really that fun to explore, trust I have been there a few times....you should learn to visualize unimaginable worlds, then explore them. There are a few really nice worlds shrouded from our view by Alpha Centauri that would make great places to start exploring.....Trust me, the women there are well worth the mental strain and training
  • monsterette, on 05/20/2008, -1/+2...these are absolutely amazing photos of Mars...the archives are pretty good too .....
  • mark076h, on 05/20/2008, -1/+1i submitted a video of a fly through of the Largest canyon on Mars and the solar system, the VALLES MARINERIS another awesome video from Nasa http://digg.com/space/You_thought_the_Grand_Canyon ...
  • Betrayer, on 05/20/2008, -0/+1anyone else notice the big black spot looks like a HUGE fingerprint
  • chadfaaborg, on 05/20/2008, -0/+0I've seen similar simulations and while it "could" be interesting, it's difficult to gauge the landscape scale w/o any reference to air speed and altitude. Were those craters 10ft wide and viewed from 100ft up? Or were they a mile across, while flying 30,000ft up?
  • guymac, on 05/20/2008, -0/+0The post is wrong; it's the *Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter*, specifically, using data from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), which observes Mars at resolutions of 30 centimeters per pixel. MRO and HiRISE are anything but dormant; MRO is 2/3rds of the way through its primary mission and HiRISE has returned around 7 trillion pixels covering roughly 0.5% of Mars.
  • gdagreat, on 05/20/2008, -0/+2photoshopped
  • tombonneau, on 05/20/2008, -0/+1Totally fake. They just zoomed in on Edward James Olmos's face.
  • nroose, on 05/20/2008, -0/+1Why is it pulsating? That kinda ruined it for me.
  • LoveYouSomeEric, on 05/20/2008, -0/+1I know that NASA's budget is tight these days, but maybe next time they could splurge on a soundtrack.
  • homesickalien, on 05/20/2008, -0/+1That was actually pretty lame and uninteresting. Computer generated terrain was cool in 1992.
  • coffee200am, on 05/20/2008, -0/+1Pixels!!!
  • kgdoom, on 05/20/2008, -0/+2Pretty sure this is what Earth will look like after we're done with it.
  • whalt, on 05/20/2008, -0/+1Pull up. Pull up!!!
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