A dry bedrock Martian crater floor?
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on June 21, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The location is a very eroded crater at about 26 degrees north latitude. The image shows the crater’s crater floor, with a variety of bedrock-type features, sharp ridges, abrupt scarps, and flat smooth plateaus, with a hint of lobate glacial flows in the image’s southeast quadrant.
At 26 north latitude, it is unlikely that anything here is icy, unless it is very well protected by debris. Most of these features are almost certainly bedrock, though their formation could very well have been shaped by ice in past eons when this location was more amenable to water ice.
The wider MRO context camera image of the entire crater, plus the overview map, give a larger picture, and raise some interesting questions.
Click for full image.
The white box in the context camera image, cropped and reduced to post here, shows the area covered by the cool image above. As you can see, this crater is very eroded, and in fact looks extremely old.
The black cross in the overview map marks the location of this crater. Sitting just inside the southern cratered highlands and very close to the transition zone and the 2,000 mile-long strip of chaos terrain from 30 to 47 degrees north latitude that I call glacier country on Mars (marked by the mensae regions dubbed Deuteronilus, Protonilus, and Nilosyrtis Mensae), the crater’s very dry look raises a mystery. In these mensae regions practically any image taken by MRO shows soft and flowing glacial-like features. This terrain is filled with ice.
Yet, in this crater, only a few degrees to the south, the crater floor appears entirely dry and hard. Can the transition from glacial bands above 30 degrees latitude to the dry equatorial regions in lower latitudes be this sharp? And if so, why?
This was a question I asked a scientist a few years ago when their research had first identified those mid-latitude bands of glaciers from 30 to 60 degrees latitudes. Why are the bands so specific? Shouldn’t they peter out more gradually? The scientist had no answer.
It could very well be that these glacial bands are the region where the near-surface ice on Mars is petering out. Above these bands the ice is in vast sheets, either in thick layers underground, very near or on the surface. Closer to the equator there is no ice close to the surface, at all. In between however the ice only partly covers the ground, and is exhibited in glacial flows.
All theories, all unproven. We need to go to actually find out.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on June 21, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The location is a very eroded crater at about 26 degrees north latitude. The image shows the crater’s crater floor, with a variety of bedrock-type features, sharp ridges, abrupt scarps, and flat smooth plateaus, with a hint of lobate glacial flows in the image’s southeast quadrant.
At 26 north latitude, it is unlikely that anything here is icy, unless it is very well protected by debris. Most of these features are almost certainly bedrock, though their formation could very well have been shaped by ice in past eons when this location was more amenable to water ice.
The wider MRO context camera image of the entire crater, plus the overview map, give a larger picture, and raise some interesting questions.
Click for full image.
The white box in the context camera image, cropped and reduced to post here, shows the area covered by the cool image above. As you can see, this crater is very eroded, and in fact looks extremely old.
The black cross in the overview map marks the location of this crater. Sitting just inside the southern cratered highlands and very close to the transition zone and the 2,000 mile-long strip of chaos terrain from 30 to 47 degrees north latitude that I call glacier country on Mars (marked by the mensae regions dubbed Deuteronilus, Protonilus, and Nilosyrtis Mensae), the crater’s very dry look raises a mystery. In these mensae regions practically any image taken by MRO shows soft and flowing glacial-like features. This terrain is filled with ice.
Yet, in this crater, only a few degrees to the south, the crater floor appears entirely dry and hard. Can the transition from glacial bands above 30 degrees latitude to the dry equatorial regions in lower latitudes be this sharp? And if so, why?
This was a question I asked a scientist a few years ago when their research had first identified those mid-latitude bands of glaciers from 30 to 60 degrees latitudes. Why are the bands so specific? Shouldn’t they peter out more gradually? The scientist had no answer.
It could very well be that these glacial bands are the region where the near-surface ice on Mars is petering out. Above these bands the ice is in vast sheets, either in thick layers underground, very near or on the surface. Closer to the equator there is no ice close to the surface, at all. In between however the ice only partly covers the ground, and is exhibited in glacial flows.
All theories, all unproven. We need to go to actually find out.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
That is Art.
Thank you.
pawn: Existence is art, when enjoyed fully and honestly.