Images from the Pheonix Mars Mission

As many already know, the Pheonix lander touched down on Mars a few days ago. It’s a great feat of engineering and it’ll be exciting if we find life under the permafrost. However, aside from whatever scientific value they may hold, I’m not really fond of the pictures from the lander or the rovers. While there is something eerily cool about seeing the surface of another planet, Mars is (1) not a very pretty planet and (2) the cameras can only give a very close-to-the-ground shot of the landscape (the flat, rock-covered, brownish-red landscape).

pheonix lander mars surface

That being said, one of the coolest images I’ve ever come across is below; it’s an artificial cloud formed from the gas of the rocket used to launch the pheonix lander.

pheonix rocket clouds

I also love the colors and how they blend together, as well as the “texture” of the clouds. I’m thinking this might be a great texture and color scheme for the design of a web site or GUI widgets or something… I don’t know, it just looks damn cool.

Full resolution images available at the Pheonix Mars Mission site.