Fly Over the Columbia Hills at APOD

By Nancy Atkinson - May 19, 2008 at 6:34 AM UTC | Planetary Science
columbia_hills1.jpg

If you haven't yet discovered

Astronomy Picture of the Day

, its an absolutely wonderful site that provides a different image every day of our universe, with explanations written by two professional astronomers, Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell. Today's APOD post is not a picture, however, but a movie. Combining data taken from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Mars Rover Spirit, Doug Ellison from

UnmannedSpaceflight.com

created a movie that simulates a fly-over of the Columbia Hills region on Mars. Of course, the Hills were named in memory of the astronauts who died in the Columbia space shuttle accident in February 2003.

In the movie you see the rippled sand on the sides of the Hills, the peak on Husband Hill where Spirit triumphantly climbed and surveyed the amazing view, and a white-colored area back on lower ground called Home Plate that Spirit has been studying for a couple of months now. Spirit herself makes a cameo in the video, too. It's just great fun to watch.

Well, instead just reading about it, go visit

APOD to watch the movie

. And stay and browse awhile: APOD boasts the largest collection of annotated astronomical images on the internet.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com