@magni.fy: The First Photo Of Mars Was Hand Drawn #Astronomy #TikTokLearningCampaign #todayilearned #sciencetok When the first close-up data from a Mars probe arrived at NASA it didn’t come as a picture - just rows of numbers. Image processing would take time. So while they waited, NASA engineers taped a giant grid to the wall and colored it in by hand, square by square to make a giant paint-by-numbers. So the first look we got of Mars was basically printed by crayons.