New looks at Mars: images from rovers and orbiters

Humans have been fascinated by the fiery glow of Mars for hundreds — if not thousands — of years.

These images were taken from both orbiters and rovers from recent Mars missions (with one exception.)

In the 1960’s, several flybys were launched to investigate the planet. While the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s enlisted orbiters to do a more thorough job of this, advanced technology has enabled NASA rovers to actually land on the cratered surface of Mars within the last decade.

You might want to take special note of the black and white photos, which are from the HIRISE Project. Established in 2005 by the University of Arizona, HIRISE releases a new group of sublime, abstract hi-res snapshots of Mars every Wednesday; you can think of them as picture postcards from outer space.