Martian beach resort discovered, Hasselhoff meets w/agent

ESA via BoingBoing

The HRSC on ESA's Mars Express obtained this perspective view on 2 February 2005 during orbit 1343 with a ground resolution of approximately 15 metres per pixel.

It shows an unnamed impact crater located on Vastitas Borealis, a broad plain that covers much of Mars's far northern latitudes, at approximately 70.5° North and 103° East.

The crater is 35 kilometres wide and has a maximum depth of approximately 2 kilometres beneath the crater rim. The circular patch of bright material located at the centre of the crater is residual water ice.

The colours are very close to natural, but the vertical relief is exaggerated three times. The view is looking east.

No word yet on lifeguards, but come on--Vastitas Borealis? Can a Baywatch-in-Space pilot be that far off?

Okay, on a less neanderthal note, surely such a huge and beautiful chunk of Hydrogen and Oxygen (and what else?) so seemingly pristine and very accessible has to be ringing bells in lots of astronautical heads, yes?

Yes. And I'm sure Maciej at Idle Words would agree and ask, "what are we waiting for?" Here's a snippet from his very nice post on the state of our space program and the fact that near-earth orbiters and similarly misnamed International "Space" Stations miss the point, and all the real action:

...There is no satisfactory answer for why all this commotion must take place in orbit. To the uneducated mind, it would seem we could accomplish our current manned space flight objectives more easily by not launching any astronauts into space at all - leaving the Shuttle and ISS on the ground would result in massive savings without the slighest impact on basic science, while also increasing mission safety by many orders of magnitude. It might even bring mission costs within the original 1970's estimates, and allow us to continue the Shuttle program well into the middle of the century.

But NASA dismisses such helpful suggetions as unworthy of its mission of 'exploration', likening critics of manned space flight to those Europeans in the 1500's who would have cancelled the great voyages of discovery rather than face the loss of one more ship.

Of course, the great explorers of the 1500's did not sail endlessly back and forth a hundred miles off the coast of Portugal, nor did they construct a massive artificial island they could repair to if their boat sprang a leak. And we must remember that space is called space for a reason - there is nothing in it, at least not where the Shuttle goes, save for a few fast-moving pieces of junk from the last few times we went up there, forty years ago. The interesting bits in space are all much further away, and we have not paid them a visit since 1972. In fact, despite an ambitious "Vision for Space Exploration", there seems to be no mandate or interest in pursuing this kind of exploration, and all the significant deadlines are pushed comfortably past the tenure of incumbent politicians.

Meanwhile, while the Shuttle has been up on blocks, a wealth of unmanned probes has been doing exactly the kind of exploration NASA considers so important, except without the encumbrance of big hairless monkeys on board. And therein lies another awkward fact for NASA. While half the NASA budget gets eaten by the manned space program, the other half is quietly spent on true aerospace work and a variety of robotic probes of immense scientific value. All of the actual exploration taking place at NASA is being done by unmanned vehicles. And when some of those unmanned craft fail, no one is killed, and the unmanned program is not halted for three years....

Much more on the design and historical mission "adjustments" to the STS and ISS programs and platforms and a nice overview of the dog's breakfast that is our current space program management in "A rocket to nowhere," here. (Hat tip to Brad DeLong)

While we're on the topic of looking at red-clad heavenly bodies, did you know that Mars is going to be as large as the moon in our night sky come August 27? You'd think that because you got this forwarded email from a friend in the last few weeks:

The Red Planet is about to be spectacular! This month and next, Earth is catching up with Mars in an encounter that will culminate in the closest approach between the two planets in recorded history. The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287. Due to the way Jupiter's gravity tugs on Mars and perturbs its orbit, astronomers can only be certain that Mars has not come this close to Earth in the Last 5,000 years, but it may be as long as 60,000 years before it happens again.

The encounter will culminate on August 27th when Mars comes to within 34,649,589 miles of Earth and will be (next to the moon) the brightest object in the night sky. It will attain a magnitude of -2.9 and will appear 25.11 arc seconds wide. At a modest 75-power magnification Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye. Mars will be easy to spot. At the beginning of August it will rise in the east at 10p.m. and reach its azimuth at about 3 a.m.

Wrong. It's two years old, referrring to the 2003 pass of Mars. And yeah, a Mars as big as the Moon, in any case, would mean wet feet for a lot of folks who don't normally think much about high tides. (Snopes and NASA has the de-bunkage. ) Never fear, October 30 around 3:00 AM is almost as good. Mars will be about as bright as Venus in the night sky. So go clean up your binocs or spend a few bucks on a Celestron or Meade
that will point you towards Mars and lots of other cool stuff, automatically and sans-astronomy degree.