In the January 5 New York Times, Kenneth Chang reports on the photographs taken in the last month by the extraordinarily high-res camera in NASA’s Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter:

Images taken by the camera, able to see features down to about a yard in size, have revealed details like rippled textures in what had looked like bland dusty regions, and researchers can now count tiny craters, enabling them to better estimate the age of terrains.

This is obviously bed-wettingly exciting stuff for planetary geologists, who are using the findings to bolster the contention that Mars was in the distant past a far more hospitable place, “wet and maybe warm.”

But did Mars sustain life? And is life there now? No conclusive signs are offered in these most recent images, but the question is one that is always on the front of the minds of those doughty men and women who make the study of Mars their lives’ work. In our November 2008 issue, Astrid Van Sarisgaard reviewed three recent books about the red planet

, and found that most tantalizing question looming throughout all three. Click over to learn more about Mars–and stay for the comments field, which contains a discontented rebuttal from one of the book’s authors!

Judging from the latest National Geographic Sports Illustrated: Swimsuit 2009 dvd

, it seems the wonders of the planet Mars can move even the most, um, sedate of authors to flights of verbal fancy. In that issue, John Updike surveys the high-resolution false-color photos coming out of the Phoenix mission and is provoked to a pitch of amazement seldom found in his many, many novels:

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The dead planet is not so dead after all: Avalanches and dust storms are caught on camera, and at the poles a seasonal sublimation of dry ice produces erosion and movement. Dunes shift; dust devils trace dark scribbles on the delicate surface. Whether or not evidence of microbial or lichenous life emerges amid this far-off flux, Mars has become an ever nearer neighbor, a province of human knowledge. Dim and fanciful visions of the twinkling fire planet have led to panoramic close-ups beautiful beyond imagining.

As Open Letters readers will know, Updike isn’t the only one imagining those beauties(like the amazing photo of a sunset on Mars); in our November issue, freelancer Astrid van Sarisgaard also becomes transfixed by the red planet, in her review of three new books about man’s ongoing attempts to explore Earth’s nearest planetary neighbor. Read her piece and see how she and Updike align!