First full-resolution images of the Martian surface
I absolutely love this stuff.  The photos to me are strangely eerie, and even perhaps a little sinister.<p>I have trouble comprehending the size of other planets, photos like these make me feel uneasy (in an exciting way) because they are strikingly similar to landscapes we might find here on earth - yet it's a completely different planet!  I'm no longer looking at mars as a red circle as shown in textbooks, but now as vast unseen landscapes that have never been explored before - a new perspective and a new age of discovery and I can't wait to see what else happens in my life.<p>It's also a stunning achievement.  As I lie in bed looking up into the darkness, a boundless expanse of tens of millions of miles of absolutely nothing lies between me, and a small man made robot with the martian wind gusting and whistling gently over it.  A robot that is cautiously making small movements, buzzing and whirring going about it's business with no one there to hear the sounds or see the movements it's making.  A machine who's intentions are totally pure - it's sole purpose is simply to learn.  A small beacon in a far-reaching expanse of barrenness and nothingness.<p>One thing I found recently I'd never heard of before is 'Venera 13': <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera_13" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera_13</a><p>A Russian rover that landed on Venus in 1981 - designed to last the harsh environment of Venus for 32 minutes but actually lasted 127 minutes.  An extraordinary engineering achievement to have a rover go from freezing space temperatures to temperatures of over 450c.<p>And it managed to transmit images of the surface:
<a href="http://mo-www.harvard.edu/microobs/guestobserverportal/Galileo/ThenNow/Venus/mObsVenusWeb_files/image007.png" rel="nofollow">http://mo-www.harvard.edu/microobs/guestobserverportal/Galil...</a><p>Absolutely stunning, and in some ways even more eerie and provocative to me than the Mars pictures as the environment it briefly operated in is far more hostile and as time was so limited the images are even more precious.