Red Planet rovers send over lifelike postcards

0 Comments | USA TODAY, November, 2006 | by Ashley Bleimes

By conjuring up lost cities, imperiled princesses and dying civilizations, authors have long fed the public's sense of the Red Planet as a landscape of exotic images. A new book, Postcards from Mars, has done what these authors could not. By using a high-tech camera mounted on top of the Mars rovers, Jim Bell has compiled a book of photos that puts our neighboring planet in sharp focus.

"These images are for all humankind to enjoy and to ponder," said Bill Nye, science educator, who wrote the forward to the book, released Thursday. "This is an experience we want everyone to share." Nye worked on the MarsDial, a sundial attached to the top of the rovers Bell used to help determine how to colorize the photos of Mars. "It very much looks like places on Earth," Nye said. "There...