The THEMIS site has a color image today. I hope they have more to come. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

http://themis.la.asu.edu/latest.html

What a lonely place! One can get lost in thoughts of travelling across the desolation, just me and my trusty camel. I wonder if there are camel-sized space suits on e-bay?

Does anyone know if NASA is selling maps of Mars based on recent higher resolution photography? Or haven't they completed photographing the surface yet? I picked up a DVD, Mars, The Red Planet a couple of years ago that basically lets you pan around, but the images are not that sharp.

High-res maps are also available on this site.
http://pdsmaps.wr.usgs.gov/maps.html

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Does earth plug a hole in Heaven or Heaven plug a hole in Earth? -Peter Gabriel

Is all of the mars surface rocky red desert, or are there some smooth desert parts as well (like maria on the moon)?

They thought the Viking landing sites would be smooth. They were wrong. The only definitely smooth parts might be the polar icecaps.

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Vastitas Borealis is quite smooth (at the resolutions that I've seen anyway) being the ancient dried up ocean floor. Craters are small, few and far between in comparison to the highlands (all of the meteors fell into the ocean, didn't they?)

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Does earth plug a hole in Heaven or Heaven plug a hole in Earth? -Peter Gabriel