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When you watch this video, if you find yourself thinking of the Apollo moon landings— here is why: this is the first real-time video taken from another world since 1972, and this is the first ever taken on another planet. Most “video” you see from other planetary missions are actually animations. Multiple image frames taken over long periods of time. Then someone registers the images to one another to smooth out the motion and then you have animated photographic video. Additionally, these seconds long clips are usually of events that actually took hours or even days to play out. That being said, seeing the Martian surface move below in real time, the parachute deploying against an alien sky, and the rover being dropped to the surface from the Sky Crane is absolutely amazing. Perhaps my favorite moment is when the Sky Crane flies off behind a cloud of dust looks just like (and actually is) an alien spacecraft visiting an alien world.
over a year ago

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Saturn Vortex

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Mars Express is Still Making Great Images 20 Years Later

Mars Express was launched by the European Space Agency in 2003, and is ESA’s first Mars mission. In one shot, you can see Mars as a half-lit disk, with Phobos, its tiny moon, hovering above. Right below Phobos is Olympus Mons, the solar system's largest volcano, towering 22 km high and 600 km across—about the size of Colorado. Posted by Andrea Luck, by way of Bad Astronomy.

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Eclipse 2024 from Space

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