Those nice people at NASA who run the HiRise camera on the Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter have being doing a nice job of public outreach. NASA has just revealed the first lot of pics of Mars, snapped by HiRise, of locations selected by the members of the public.

The programme is called HiWish and began in January. Over 1000 suggestions were made. The eerie boulder-strewn plain (right) in an area called Northern Utopia Planitia is one of my favourites. This is typical of the landscape in Mars’s northern plains.

Other pictures include: the northern edge of Olympus Mons, the largest volcano not only on Mars but in the entire solar system; a layered ice sheet; dunes on the bottom of one of Mars’s longest ancient valley systems, and more.

You can see them all here.

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona