Let’s say you’re thinking about investing in land. And taking the really, really long view.
Could I interest you in some lovely backcountry acreage with canyon-like features? Or some prairie-flat plains dotted with craters? Or maybe some chloride salt beds?
Could I interest you, to put it directly, in Mars?
Okay, nobody’s buying off-world real estate yet (outside of science fiction or some pretty clever entrepreneurs), but NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has announced the release of thousands of high-definition photographs of the Red Planet’s surface.
It’s some pretty spectacular viewing, too, courtesy of the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. According to JPL’s website, “Each full image from HiRISE covers a strip of Martian ground 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) wide, about two to four times that long, showing details as small as 1 meter, or yard, across.”
We’re still years away from a manned Mars mission, of course, and decades (if that) away from the average earthling getting a chance to set foot on our neighboring planet. But with these gorgeous photos available, there’s just a little temptation to pick out a spot for some far-future vacation, just in case.
For our part, the Meridiani Planum Southern Boundary looks like a lovely place to park a yurt and spend a few weeks hiking and sightseeing.