Posted: Wed, Aug 27, 2003, 6:16 PM ET (2216 GMT)
The planet Mars made its closest approach to Earth in nearly 60,000 years early Wednesday, offering skygazers their best view ever of the Red Planet. Mars came to within 56 million kilometers of the Earth early Wednesday. People around the world have taken the opportunity to view the planet through telescopes, although the planet will still be well-positioned for observations for the next several weeks. Taking advantage of the close passage, the Hubble Space Telescope took images of Mars around the time of closest approach, providing what astronomers described as the best images of Mars ever taken from the Earth or Earth orbit. Demand for the images was so strong that the Space Telescope Science Institute's computers struggled to serve up the web pages with the images during the day Wednesday.

Related Links:

•  Science@NASA article
•  Hubble image release
•  Reuters article
•  AFP article
•  AP article