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NASA’s Newly Released Footage of Mars’ Rolling Blue Dunes

People have never been able to get enough of NASA‘s space explorations.

We don’t understand how any of it works, we have no idea what’s out there, but something in our adventurous human spirit constantly has our eyes trained on the heavens, and we want to know.

NASA’s technology, of course, has only gotten better, and these recently released images of the rolling blue dunes on Mars are enough to take your breath away.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL

Let’s take a closer look.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL

Simply beautiful…

Image Credit: NASA/JPL

Mars might be known as the red planet, the color a result of the high iron content of its soil, but that’s not all it has to offer – the planet also has polar regions and active weather patterns.

Those things, combined with a thin atmosphere, makes it easy (comparatively) to snap images of the rolling blue and gold dunes on the other side of the planet.

There, the landscape is varied and always changing, the proof of which was captured by the Mars Odyssey Orbiter.

Image Credit: Pexels

The Mars Odyssey launched on April 7, 2001 and is still circling its destination planet with its infrared camera, generating images of the changing temperatures of the surface. In these pictures the yellow indicates warmer temperatures and the blue cooler, with the largest swath of blue a 19-mile expanse of polar cap – the whole of which is larger than the state of Texas.

They wouldn’t be blue to the naked eye, but it’s gorgeous to look at.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL

I hope that NASA continues exploring, and continues to share the interesting, wonderful, and beautiful discoveries just waiting to be made in space.

There might be more pressing issues here on Earth, but there always have been – but that fact has never stopped human beings from spending their time gazing up at the stars.