If you still think Mars is just a big, boring ball of red dust, you’ve gotta see what NASA and the ESA just sent back. It's wild. Honestly, the newest pics of Mars hitting the wires in early 2026 are making the place look less like a desert and more like a crime scene for ancient geology.
We’re talking "megaripples" that look like frozen waves and sulfur crystals hiding inside rocks that we literally stumbled over. These aren't just pretty postcards. They're basically rewriting the history of how much water was actually sloshing around up there.
The January 2026 "Megaripple" Reveal
On January 7, 2026, the Perseverance team released a shot of something they called "Hazyview." It’s an aeolian megaripple. Basically, imagine a sand dune that grew to be six feet tall and then just... stopped.
Scientists are obsessed with these because they’re like time capsules. Most of these ripples don't move anymore. They're stuck. By studying the way the sand is layered in the high-res Mastcam-Z photos, researchers can tell exactly which way the wind was blowing millions of years ago. It’s kinda like reading a frozen weather report from the deep past.
Perseverance is currently hanging out in a spot called the "Honeyguide" ripple field. It's a rough neighborhood for a rover. The sand here is weirdly coarse, and the way it reflects light in the newest pics of Mars helps engineers figure out if the ground is safe enough to drive on or if they're about to get stuck in a cosmic sand trap.
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Curiosity’s Mount Sharp Masterpiece
While "Percy" is playing in the sand, the old-timer Curiosity is still climbing. On January 6, 2026, NASA dropped a massive panorama from high up on Mount Sharp.
"This is basically a postcard from the edge of the world."
That’s how some people are describing the view of the "boxwork" formations. These are these crazy, intricate networks of mineral ridges. They look like a spiderweb made of stone. They formed when groundwater seeped into rock cracks billions of years ago and left minerals behind. The soft rock eroded away, and now we’re left with these skeletons of ancient plumbing.
The lighting in these shots is the real kicker. The team actually combined photos from different times of day—morning and afternoon—to show how the shadows stretch across the Gale Crater floor. The rim of the crater is visible 25 miles away. It looks hauntingly like the Southwest US, except, you know, nobody’s there.
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The "Blue Planet" Theory Gets a Massive Boost
Probably the biggest bombshell to drop this month wasn't even a photo of a rock, but what the photos proved. A study out of the University of Bern used high-res images from the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (specifically the CaSSIS camera) to map out "fan deltas" in the Valles Marineris.
We’re talking about clear evidence of a coastline.
The researchers, led by PhD student Ignatius Argadestya, found mountain-and-valley structures that look exactly like river mouths on Earth. Based on these newest pics of Mars, they’re now arguing that a massive ocean—as big as the Arctic Ocean—once covered the northern hemisphere.
It’s a huge shift. We used to think Mars was "warm and wet" or "cold and dry." Now, the data suggests it might have been "cold and wet," with thin seasonal ice protecting liquid water underneath.
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The Stuff You Might Have Missed
- Sulfur Crystals: On January 5, 2026, we got a close-up of elemental sulfur crystals. Curiosity actually crushed a rock nicknamed "Convict Lake" by driving over it, and the inside was full of yellow crystals. Nobody expected that.
- Atmospheric "Mille-Feuille": The ESA released a composite image showing the Martian atmosphere layered like a French pastry. Tiny ice grains above 25 miles, dust below.
- Solar Conjunction: Heads up—if you notice a gap in the raw image feed, it’s because Mars and Earth were on opposite sides of the sun recently. The rovers were on autopilot for a bit because the sun blocks the radio signals.
Why You Should Care About These Raw Feeds
Look, the processed photos are great, but the raw image galleries are where the real mystery is. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) uploads these almost daily. You’ll see "Hazcam" shots that look like black-and-white CCTV footage, and then suddenly a "Mastcam-Z" shot that’s so sharp you can see individual pebbles.
The mission isn't just about looking for little green men anymore. It's about "Cheyava Falls"—a rock sample Perseverance grabbed that might contain a "fingerprint" of ancient microbial life.
We won't know for sure until those samples come back to Earth, but the newest pics of Mars show the rover is getting closer to the good stuff. It’s currently heading toward a spot called "Lac de Charmes," which is rich in olivine. That’s a volcanic mineral that changes when it hits water.
What’s Next for the Mars Obsessed?
If you want to stay ahead of the curve, keep an eye on the mission sol (Martian day) counters. Perseverance is closing in on Sol 1750.
- Check the Raw Feeds: Go to the NASA Mars 2020 multimedia site. Sort by "Newest" to see the unedited Hazcam shots before they hit the news.
- Watch for the Blue Origin Launch: The ESCAPADE mission just launched to study the Martian magnetosphere. We’re going to get a whole different kind of "picture" from those twin satellites soon.
- Follow the ESA ExoMars Updates: The Rosalind Franklin rover is getting its landing platform built by Airbus right now. Its photos will eventually come from underground because it has a 2-meter drill.
The Red Planet is becoming a lot more familiar. And honestly? A lot more interesting.
Actionable Next Steps:
To see the absolute newest pics of Mars as they land, bookmark the NASA JPL Raw Image Gallery for the Perseverance rover. These are usually uploaded within hours of being received on Earth, often days before they are featured in news articles. You can filter by camera type—select Mastcam-Z for the highest-resolution landscape vistas or WATSON for microscopic textures of Martian dust.