Babe, wake up, a new Martian map just dropped. 🗺 Seen are six views of the Nili Fossae region of Mars captured by the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars, or CRISM, one of the instruments aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). This multicolored 5.6-gigapixel map covers 86% of the Red Planet’s surface and reveals the distribution of dozens of key minerals, the varying colors representing different minerals on the Martian surface seen in different wavelengths of light. Launched in 2005, the spacecraft has spent the last 16 years mapping the surface of Mars. Since then, CRISM’s maps have been used to select landing sites for other spacecraft, as with Jezero Crater, where our Perseverance Mars rover is exploring an ancient river delta. To keep its instruments cool enough to make the most accurate infrared mappings of Mars possible it was deployed with three cyrocoolers, that over the extent of its mission have been spent. Although CRISM won’t be making as ...