Strange Blue Planet, 142 Million Kilometres

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Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

The view from Martian orbit: Earth and its companion as seen by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. A good subtitle might be: "We told you the HiRISE camera was powerful!"

Click for the full view. You know you want to.

Lunokhod Style

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Image credit: NASA or Soviet Union

A post on the planetary society links to this very cool article. Many of my generation may have assumed that the dinky little Pathfinder rover was the first remote vehicle to wander the surface of another world - but in fact the Soviets got there first.

The USSR placed two rovers, or Lunokhods on the surface of Earth's moon early in the seventies. It was also revealed in the 1990s that they even landed a pair of ill-fated rovers on Mars in the seventies - one of which expired after mere seconds, while the other was destroyed in what you might call a 'descent of unplanned rapidity' (or 'crash').

On the one hand, the lunokhods are very cool - not just a milestone in the history of space exploration, but a damn cool piece of retro chic. On the other hand, the Soviet Mars rovers are emblematic of the whole Soviet Mars program: cool ideas that failed spectacularly, seemingly through nothing but bad luck.

Spaceman

Credit: NASA
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I don't often post images from manned missions - purely because unmanned missions pay greater dividends (and for a smaller outlay to boot). But this image of astronaut Joseph Tanner orbiting the Earth (way back in 1997) is undeniably sublime.

Earth by Night

Credit: ESA MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA
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The image above was beamed back to Earth (as you can see, from not all that far away) some time last week, but I was too busy to post it at the time. This mysterious planet was photographed by our comet-chasing robot friend Rosetta, who was borrowing a tiny bit of momentum from it.

I recommend viewing the high resolution version to appreciate the full beauty of that thin crescent of daylight at the bottom of the image.

21st July 1969

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This photo was taken by Michael Collins. Collins is the Apollo 11 astronaut whose name you can't remember because he wasn't the first man on the moon and he didn't have a cool nickname like 'Buzz'.