NASA's Mars Orbiter beams back intriguing image of a crater and netizens can't keep calm

NASA has taken the internet by storm yet again after it released a photograph of a stunning crater on Mars. Captured by the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (Hi-RISE) onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), this image indicates the 0° longitude on Mars, which is the Greenwich Observatory equivalent on the Red Planet. Called 'Airy Crater,' the Martian feature has garnered a lot of praise and fascination from netizens as it has clocked in over 4,50,000 likes so far.

"The larger crater that sits within this crater, called the Airy Crater, originally defined zero longitude for Mars, but as higher resolution photos became available, a small feature was needed. This feature called Airy-0 (zero) was selected because it did not need to adjust existing maps", NASA captioned the captivating image. As mentioned above, the crater is located at 0° longitude on the red planet regarding which the agency explained in terms of the Earth.

"The Greenwich Observatory marks the Earth's Prime Meridian, which is a North-South line that defines where east meets west, and is used as a zero-reference line for astronomical observations", NASA added. 

Mars orbiter's intriguing gallery

Along with the image shared above, the orbiter has many intriguing images in its gallery. Most recently, it beamed back a bird's eye view of the Chinese Zhurong rover using its Hi-RISE camera. 

(Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona)

The photo above, captured by MRO shows a tiny bug-like rover in the vast and barren land of the red planet. Interestingly, NASA also marked the path taken by the rover which can be spotted in both the images next to the blue coloured arrow. After landing on Mars in May 2021, the Zhurong rover has travelled roughly 1.5 kilometres from its touchdown spot. Most recently, the rover stumbled upon evidence that its current exploration site endured long periods of weathering by wind and even water. The location which Zhurong is exploring is called the Utopia Planitia and scientists believe that the region hosted a massive ocean billions of years ago.

Image: Instagram/@NASA