1 day Ago
NASA's Odyssey spacecraft, the longest-running mission at Mars, circled the Red Planet for the 100,000th time today, the mission team announced in a statement . To celebrate the milestone, the space agency released an intricate panorama of Olympus Mons, the tallest volcano in the solar system; Odyssey captured the view in March. The volcano's base sprawls 373 miles (600 kilometers) near the Martian equator while it soars 17 miles (27 kilometers) into the planet's thin air.
Earlier this month, astronomers discovered ephemeral morning frost coating the volcano's top for a few hours every day, offering fresh insights into how ice from the poles circulates throughout the parched world. In Odyssey's latest image of the volcano, the bluish-white band seen grazing Olympus Mons shows the amount of dust floating in the Martian air when the image was taken, according to NASA. The thin coat of purple just above likely hints at a mixture of atmospheric dust with bluish water-ice clouds.
The blue-green layer at the top-edge of the world marks where water-ice clouds reach up about 30 miles (48 kilometers) into the Martian sky, scientists say. To capture the latest panorama, scientists commanded Odyssey to slowly rotate such that its camera pointed toward the Martian horizon, capturing views similar to the kind International Space Station dwellers take of Earth . Related: Giant Mars mountain Olympus Mons may once have been a volcanic island "Normally we see Olympus Mons in narrow strips fro.
