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Earth ellipse

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HOT SHOTS SUBHDR

ON NOVEMBER 9, 1967, the uncrewed Apollo 4 test flight made a great ellipse around Earth as a test of the translunar motors and of the high-speed entry required of a crewed flight returning from the Moon. A 70mm camera was programmed to look out a window toward Earth, and take a series of photographs from “high apogee.”

This photograph was made as the Apollo 4 spacecraft, still attached to the
S-IVB (third) stage, orbited Earth at an altitude of 9,544 miles.

—NASA

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Dot’s it!

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HOT SHOTS SUBHDR

CAN YOU SEE IT? That itty-bitty-teensy-weensy blue dot? Right there at the tip of the arrow? 

It’s the Curiosity Rover on the surface of Mars. Using the most powerful telescope ever sent to Mars, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter caught this view of the this month amid rocky mountainside terrain.

The car-size rover, climbing up lower Mount Sharp toward its next destination, appears as a blue dab against a background of tan rocks and dark sand in the enhanced-color image from the orbiter’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera. The exaggerated color, showing differences in Mars surface materials, makes Curiosity appear bluer than it really looks.

When the image was taken, Curiosity was partway between its investigation of active sand dunes lower on Mount Sharp, and “Vera Rubin Ridge,” a destination uphill where the rover team intends to examine outcrops where hematite has been identified from Mars orbit.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ of Arizona

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