Space Is Awesome - And These Images Prove It

If you've never heard of the Twitter account @HiRISE, allow me to introduce you.

It stands for the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment. The account posts images created by data from the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Images like this one. NASA says: "We took this image during the Martian fall in the Southern Hemisphere, in the giant impact crater known as Hellas Basin where small boulders cast long shadows. Carbon dioxide frost is condensing, and shows up as bright blue patches in the enhanced color image."

Cool, huh? Check this one out, which NASA explains, "shows sand dunes within the Hellespontus region of Mars. The sand appears to come from layered mesas and knobs, features eroded by powerful winds. But the origin of the sand could be far away, with dunes forming behind topographic obstacles."

I really, really hope that in my lifetime interplanetary travel becomes no more of a hassle than booking a flight overseas. A man can dream, right?

For more space fun, you can follow NASA's Dawn Mission (@NASA_Dawn) and it's probably worth following the always informative astronomer Phil Plait (@BadAstronomer) and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson), who posts tidbits like, "if Earth rotated 16x faster, then centrifugal forces at the equator would render everything weightless there. Even now, chubby Santa weighs about a pound less at the equator than at the North Pole."