Consider deep space and the following category of image will be noticeably without representation among the scenes you call to mind: the standing-on-its-surface view of an alphanumeric-labeled planet. A Google image search confirms that the visuals we conjure are largely a reflection of the types of images satellites have dutifully transmitted back to Earth for our perusal. We can hardly be blamed, then, for failing to include in our personal galleries surface-level vistas of a planet’s horizon. The chastising finger instead points accusingly at the telescope-equipped satellites whose output we partially rely on to shape our own impressions of what exists beyond.

I see no argument to explain why capturing snapshots belonging to the category currently without representation would be technically unfeasible. If we can admire the Tarantula Nebula in all its splendor, a gaseous dust cloud 160 light years distant, it stands to reason that we can focus also on any object that is closer. And not only focus, but zoom in at great scale.

The first issue a concerned observer might raise is the complexity introduced by atmospheres, whose layers, if characterized by different refractive indexes, will frustrate efforts to render anything but a blurred image. One answer to this conundrum is the relatively recent development of stunningly powerful algorithms that can take a blurry celestial image and output its in-focus version. Many of Hubble’s original photos have been so processed, and the before/after difference represents an emphatic win for computer science. But let’s instead deal cleanly with the matter and eliminate from consideration all planets with atmospheres, leaving only those without the capacity to obscure their nakedness via light-bending tricks.

The next concern, a lesser one, is that most captures would be bird’s-eye views, like those we commonly see of our moon. So be it. Such is the ineluctable consequence of physics, geometry, probability, etc. It’s obvious that a telescope focused on some small patch of sphere will most often be nearly perpendicular to the sphere surface observed through the eyepiece: the surface area of a circle exceeds the area represented by a narrow band equal in length to the circle’s circumference. But to say that most captures would be bird’s-eye views is very different from saying that they all would be, and when one considers that satellite controllers on Earth are capable of orienting their telescope and that there are countless planets without atmospheres that are within focus range, it’s clear there would be little wait before a telescope lined up as necessary to yield a standing-on-the-surface view, illustrated:

The point is that there need not be a reliance on landing rovers to relay images capturing the desired perspective. The near non-existence of such images in our gallery of deep space I attribute not to technical limitations, but to aesthetics. Perhaps there is little demand for barren scenes of a planet’s desolate surface, whereas a nebula delights with its myriad colors and ethereal forms.