Mars Volcano Rises Above the Clouds

If you think Earth’s mountains are tall, Mars has them beat by a mile—or several, actually. NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter recently captured a striking image of Arsia Mons, a volcano on Mars that stands about 12 miles high. For comparison, that’s roughly twice the height of Mauna Loa in Hawaii, Earth’s biggest volcano. The Mars Odyssey orbiter has been circling the planet since 2001, continuing to send back useful data and images for researchers on Earth.

What makes this new image interesting is how Arsia Mons rises above a layer of early morning clouds. The photo, taken in early May, shows the volcano’s summit poking through the clouds, which isn’t something scientists have seen from this angle before. The Odyssey spacecraft had to rotate 90 degrees to get this unique perspective, making the view possible.

Arsia Mons is part of a group of three volcanoes called the Tharsis Montes. It’s known for being the cloudiest of the trio, especially during a period in Mars’ year when the planet is farthest from the sun. During this time, water ice clouds often form around the volcanoes, and the new image gives researchers a better look at how these clouds interact with the Martian landscape.

According to Jonathon Hill, who works with Odyssey’s camera team, they specifically aimed to catch the volcano’s peak above the clouds—and the results matched their expectations. These kinds of images help scientists study both the volcanoes themselves and the Martian atmosphere, including how dust and clouds change with the seasons.

‘Astronaut’ Crew Emerges After 520 Days of Isolation

The crew of a long-duration isolation study finally “landed” back on earth to be greeted by daylight and applause after living 520 days, or seventeen months, in a simulation of space travel to Mars.

The Mars500 experiment, which cost $15 million, aimed to test whether humans could stay physically and mentally healthy during the months of travel to Mars.

Six male volunteers from Europe, Russia and China took part in the experiment. On Friday, they emerged from their cells red eyed but smiling, and were allowed to greet friends and family briefly before being sent into a three-day quarantine.

“It’s really, really great to see you again, rather heartwarming,” said Diego Urbina, an Italian-Colombian participant. “On this mission we’ve achieved the longest isolation ever so that humankind can go to a distant but reachable planet.

Psychologists worry that the noise and activity of normal life will shock the would-be astronauts greatly.
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“Time seems to have flown by since we closed the hatch last year. But how time really felt to the crew we’ll soon know. Probably we’ll have a very big difference of opinion,” said Igor Ushakov, head of the Russian Institute for Biomedical Problems, which ran the experiment.

Having fed on real astronauts rations, rarely showered and taken daily urine and blood samples, the men felt truly distant from Mission Control.

“I felt a physical distance between out crew and the people in Mission Control. My reasoning knows that they’re just 20 m away from us but my mind can’t accept it.”