Remembering the Space Age. - Black Vault Radio Network (BVRN)

288 reMeMberING the SpaCe aGe
1944: “Saturn from the Surface of its Moon Titan.” (©Bonestell Space Art)
two rovers have been scientifcally studying, sampling, and photographing the
surface of the Martian landscape since January 2004. among the many startling
photographs are the serene images looking back at the rover’s wheel tracks and
a hint of its solar panels, the lone trace of human ingenuity and technology
amid a landscape of rocky debris on the wind-blown Martian sand. Some of
these photographs recall Curtis’s landscape documentation of Native american
villages in the american Southwest. for example, Curtis took a photograph
of a deserted hopi Indian building in the village of Walpi, a 500-year-old
village on a mesa in northern arizona. the village rests at the near edge of
an eroded rocky clif protruding out into the desert. the aesthetics of this
image and the warm-toned yellow hue, resulting from the gravure process that
reproduced the original, can be compared to some of the rover Opportunity’s
panoramic photographs made in a location known as Meridiani planum. In
one reddish hued image, the curving wheel tracks from the rover show how it
navigated around rock debris in the Meridiani planum, a vast dry lakebed that
may have once contained water, and the rim of Victoria crater on the horizon.
the quality of light, the similarities in camera framing, and the feeling of
desolateness ofer a comparison between the geological evolution of earth and