Viewing Victoria

Named after the first ship to circumnavigate the Earth, Victoria Crater has been captured on film like never before

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has been studying Mars since 2006. It has returned more data about the the Red Planet than all the other past and current missions to Mars combined.

And now, according to a recent NASA press release, the MRO's high-resolution camera has taken a dramatic oblique view of Victoria Crater, an impact crater about half-a-mile in diameter located in Meridiani Planum near the equator of Mars. The Mars rover Opportunity has explored this crater for two years.

Officially named after Victoria, Seychelles, the crater is informally named after the Victoria, one of Ferdinand Magellan's five ships that set sail on August 10, 1519, from Seville, Spain -- a journey that would be man's first circumnavigation of the globe.

Some of the distinguishing features of Victoria Crater have been named, such as Cape Verde and Duck Bay.

Though these locations sound like great weekend getaways, don't book your tickets anytime soon: The average surface temperature of Mars is 55 degrees below freezing.

GET INVOLVED

• Sign a petition to add the option for US taxpayers to contribute to NASA on the IRS 1040 tax form
• See what's in the sky tonight
• Download Google Earth 5.0, which has an interactive map of the entire surface of Mars
• Buy a beginner telescope from the Discovery Channel store ($99.00)

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• A Possible New World Fit for Life (April 28, 2009)
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image: Victoria Crater in the Meridiani Planum region of Mars taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter at more of a sideways angle than earlier orbital images of this crater. The camera pointing was 22 degrees east of straight down, yielding a view comparable to looking at the landscape out an airplane window. East is at the top. The most interesting exposures of geological strata are in the steep walls of the crater, difficult to see from straight overhead. Especially prominent in this oblique view is a bright band near the top of the crater wall. Colors have been enhanced to make subtle differences more visible. Opportunity explored the rim and interior of this 800-meter-wide (half-mile-wide) crater from September 2006 through August 2008. The rover's on-site investigations indicated that the bright band near the top of the crater wall was formed by diagenesis (chemical and physical changes in sediments after deposition). The bright band separates bedrock from the material displaced by the impact that dug the crater. This view is a cutout from a HiRISE exposure taken on July 18, 2009. Some of Opportunity's tracks are still visible to the north of the crater (left side of this cutout). (image credit: NASA/JPL-caltech/University of Arizona)