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