February 26, 2018 - Looking up at Murray Buttes
Looking up at Murray Buttes On September 1, 2016, during its 1,448th Sol (the length of a Martian day) on Mars, the Curiosity Rover captured this close-up image of the Murray Buttes. The buttes and mesas rising above the surface in this area near Mount Sharp are eroded remnants of ancient sandstone that originated when winds deposited sand after lower Mount Sharp had formed. They are capped by material that is relatively resistant to erosion, just as is the case with many similarly shaped buttes and mesas on Earth. The top of the butte in this scene stands about five meters (16 feet) above the rover and about 25 meters (82 feet) east-southeast of the rover. The area’s name honors Bruce Murray (1931-2013), a Caltech planetary scientist and director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Weekly Calendar
February 26 - March 4, 2018
Holidays - Sky Events - Space History
Monday 26
1842: Camille Flammarion born
1966: First Saturn 1B rocket launched
Tuesday 27
Moon at perigee
1897: Bernard Lyot born
1970: HL-10 sets lifting body altitude record of 90,300 feet
Wednesday 28
1959: Discoverer 1 launched
1966: Gemini IX primary crew, Bassett & See, killed in plane crash
1990: STS-36 Atlantis launched
2007: New Horizons spacecraft flies past Jupiter en route to Pluto
Thursday 1
Regulus 0.9° south of Moon
Full Moon 7:51 PM ET
1927: George Abell born
1966: Venera 3 impacts on Venus
1982: Venera 13 returns first color photos from the surface of Venus
2002: STS-109 Columbia launched
2016: ISS crew completes one-year mission
Friday 2
1972: Pioneer 10 launched
1995: STS-67 Endeavour launched (Astro-2 mission)
2004: Rosetta cometary probe launched
Saturday 3
1959: Pioneer 4 launched
1969: Apollo 9 launched
Sunday 4
Neptune in conjunction with Sun
1979: Jupiter’s rings discovered
1994: STS-62 Columbia launched