The First Color Photograph Taken on the Surface of Mars, the Red Planet

Vintage chromogenic print on resin coated Kodak paper, 'This paper manufactured by Kodak' watermarks on the verso, ink annotation 'P-17164'. The first color photograph of the surface of Mars. [NASA caption online] First color picture taken on the surface of Mars today by the Viking 1 Lander shows that the Martian soil consists mainly of reddish fine-grained material. However, small patches of black or blue-black soil are found deposited around many of the foreground rocks. Most of the rocks also are coated with a reddish stain except where the rock’s surface has been freshly fractured or abraded. There is a group of black or blue-black rock[s] near the horizon which appear free of the reddish stain. They may be relatively young volcanic rocks or older volcanic rocks very recently excavated from the subsurface. The horizon is about three kilometers (1.8 miles) from Viking 1’s camera. The scene, covering about 67° from left to right, was scanned three times, each time with a different color filter. The color was reconstructed with computer processing.

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