What Color is the Red Planet, Really?

Out There iconOut There
By Corey S. Powell
Mar 20, 2013 10:11 PMNov 5, 2019 4:33 AM

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Sounds like a trick question, doesn’t it? Sort of like “Who is buried in Grant’s Tomb?” And  yet the answer keeps confounding a lot of smart people. (DISCOVER even published a whole feature on the question.) Now the issue keeps coming up again in the latest images from the Curiosity rover. Blue skies on Mars? Can that be right? Which of these images shows what Mars really looks like?

"Is this the real Mars? A mosaic from NASA's Curiosity rover shows Mount Sharp in raw color. NASA describes raw color as the way the scene would look "in

Is this the real Mars? A mosaic from NASA’s Curiosity rover shows Mount Sharp in raw color. NASA describes raw color as the way the scene would look “in a typical smart-phone camera photo.” (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

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