This close-up from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE camera shows weathered craters and windblown deposits in southern Acidalia Planitia. A striking shade of blue in standard HiRISE image colors, to the human eye the area would probably look grey or a little reddish. But human eyes have not gazed across this terrain, unless you count the eyes of NASA astronauts in the scifi novel The Martian by Andy Weir.

The novel chronicles the adventures of Mark Watney, an astronaut stranded at the fictional Mars mission Ares 3 landing site corresponding to the coordinates of this cropped HiRISE frame. For scale Watney's 6-meter-diameter habitat at the site would be about 1/10th the diameter of the large crater. Of course, the Ares 3 landing coordinates are only about 800 kilometers north of the (real life) Carl Sagan Memorial Station, the 1997 Pathfinder landing site.

thanks! Please permit this dumb question: how do you know what the image is going to be?!

@edsu Upcoming APODs are posted ahead of time to apod.nasa.gov/apod/fap/ so mirror operators have time to prepare. For instance, today's is apod.nasa.gov/apod/fap/ap24032…

thanks for sharing that! I was just reading (in Wikipedia) about the mirrors that were active during the US government shutdown. I didn't realize that they were still going, and existed before the shutdown it sounds like?

@edsu Yes, independent mirrors are a long running APOD tradition. The one hosted by UC London has been online since 1999! Many mirrors are translated into their local language, you can find a list here apod.nasa.gov/apod/lib/about_a…