Rectangles with Wiggly Sides
HiRISE PICTURE OF THE DAY: 29 AUGUST 2026
Rectangles with Wiggly Sides

Ground that has a lot of water ice mixed with dirt tends to crack in polygonal patterns bounded by short straight channels. In the South Polar region of Mars this type of terrain may be covered by a seasonal polar cap composed of dry ice.



100,000 Image of Mars!
On 7 October 2025, the HiRISE camera aboard MRO acquired an image of the Syrtis Major plains that marks over 100,000 images of Mars, which is a fabulous milestone!
HiRISE Image of Exocomet 3I/ATLAS
On 2 October 2025, MRO turned away from Mars to image 3I/ATLAS, only the third interstellar object ever observed passing through our solar system!

HiRISE Instrument News
HiRISE Instrument News
Since mid-2023, our RED4 CCD has operated only intermittently due to a hardware issue, creating gaps in the middle of some image products and reducing the color swath to 1 CCD width. We continue to command RED4 in all observations and it returns data approximately 50% of the time

Layering in Western Arabia Terra
This image provides a look at layered deposits that with a stereo pair with maximal vertical resolution, can give us some insight into bed thickness measurements. We can also derive a digital terrain model for even more detail about this terrain. Arabia Terra is a highland region in Mars’ Northern Hemisphere, dating back to the planet’s Noachian geological era, around four billion years ago.