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Since it first began orbiting Mars in 2006, the HiRISE (High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment), a powerful camera attached to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, has captured some 50,000 images of the planet. Its photographs have given scientists unprecedented access to Mars’s canyons, craters, mountains and sand dunes – the most detailed looks at the topography of another planet to date. In making A Fictive Flight Above Real Mars, the Finnish filmmaker Jan Fröjdman transformed stereoscopic anaglyphs taken by HiRISE into coloured, seemingly three-dimensional moving images, giving viewers something resembling the experience of a leisurely flight above our neighbouring planet. While often breathtaking, the video depicts unmistakably desolate, barren landscapes, hostile to human life, and still very far from a place to call home.
Director: Jan Fröjdman
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Family life
The precious family keepsakes that hold meaning for generations
10 minutes
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Neuroscience
This intricate map of a fruit fly brain could signal a revolution in neuroscience
2 minutes
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Archaeology
What did the first people who entered Tutankhamun’s tomb see?
5 minutes
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Information and communication
Coverage of the ‘balloon boy’ hoax forms a withering indictment of for-profit news
17 minutes
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Childhood and adolescence
Marmar is living through a devastating war – but she’d rather tell you about her new dress
8 minutes
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Computing and artificial intelligence
The ‘cloud’ requires heaps of energy to stay aloft. Could synthetic DNA be the answer?
12 minutes
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History
There are fragments of Romani Gypsy history all over the UK – if one knows where to look
3 minutes
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Biology
Brilliant dots of colour form exquisite patterns in this close-up of butterfly wings
3 minutes
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Anthropology
Does Mogi’s future lie with her horses on the Mongolian steppe, or in the city?
16 minutes