Recent avalanche on Mars
Click for full image.
For full images go here and here.
Cool image time! Today the science team for the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) released images showing a very recent avalanche, or slumping, on the interior slopes of what looks like a small three-mile-wide crater inside the easternmost reaches of the giant canyon Valles Marineris.
The comparison above, reduced and rotated to post here, is their close-up showing the change, which occurred sometime between March 2021 and February 2022. The wider comparison on the right, cropped, reduced, and annotated by me, shows a wider view to help place this slumping in the context of the crater.
Calling this an avalanche is not really accurate, as it isn’t really the fall of boulders and rocks, but the quick slumping downward of an entire section of what looks like dust or sand. As Alfred McEwen of the Lunar & Planetary Laboratory in Arizona writes in the caption:
In geology, a slump forms a mass of loosely consolidated material or a rock layer moves a short distance down a slope. The movement is characterized by sliding along a concave-upward or planar surface.
…Causes of slumping on Earth include earthquake shocks, reduction of friction through wetting, freezing and thawing, undercutting (such as from a stream), and loading of a slope. Based on the geomorphology of this region and other active slumps seen on Mars, we suspect loading of the slope via smaller-scale activity like gullies, recurring slope lineae and windblown deposits may have contributed to the slumping. Perhaps a Marsquake triggered the movement.
McEwen estimates the length of the slump to be just under a half mile long. That this is located in Mars’ dry equatorial regions is probably why he favors a quake as a cause rather than a freeze-thaw cycle of ice, though the latter is not impossible based on the presently available data.
The wider comparison also shows other changes in several streaks in the lower right. These might be slope streaks or recurring slope lineae, which while superficially similar are fundamentally different.
The black dot near the label Capri on the eastern end of Valles Marineris in the overview map below marks the location of this crater. The floor of the canyon in this region is actually very complex chaos terrain, with many mesas and hills packed randomly together, with this crater apparently a later impact on top of this hilly terrain.
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.
For full images go here and here.
Cool image time! Today the science team for the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) released images showing a very recent avalanche, or slumping, on the interior slopes of what looks like a small three-mile-wide crater inside the easternmost reaches of the giant canyon Valles Marineris.
The comparison above, reduced and rotated to post here, is their close-up showing the change, which occurred sometime between March 2021 and February 2022. The wider comparison on the right, cropped, reduced, and annotated by me, shows a wider view to help place this slumping in the context of the crater.
Calling this an avalanche is not really accurate, as it isn’t really the fall of boulders and rocks, but the quick slumping downward of an entire section of what looks like dust or sand. As Alfred McEwen of the Lunar & Planetary Laboratory in Arizona writes in the caption:
In geology, a slump forms a mass of loosely consolidated material or a rock layer moves a short distance down a slope. The movement is characterized by sliding along a concave-upward or planar surface.
…Causes of slumping on Earth include earthquake shocks, reduction of friction through wetting, freezing and thawing, undercutting (such as from a stream), and loading of a slope. Based on the geomorphology of this region and other active slumps seen on Mars, we suspect loading of the slope via smaller-scale activity like gullies, recurring slope lineae and windblown deposits may have contributed to the slumping. Perhaps a Marsquake triggered the movement.
McEwen estimates the length of the slump to be just under a half mile long. That this is located in Mars’ dry equatorial regions is probably why he favors a quake as a cause rather than a freeze-thaw cycle of ice, though the latter is not impossible based on the presently available data.
The wider comparison also shows other changes in several streaks in the lower right. These might be slope streaks or recurring slope lineae, which while superficially similar are fundamentally different.
The black dot near the label Capri on the eastern end of Valles Marineris in the overview map below marks the location of this crater. The floor of the canyon in this region is actually very complex chaos terrain, with many mesas and hills packed randomly together, with this crater apparently a later impact on top of this hilly terrain.
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.
Based on looking at the headscarp area, and the lateral boundaries of the slump, it appears to be very shallow, affecting only the immediate surface of the soil. I doubt it pulled more than a couple feet of material at most off the slope. Some lower boundary prevented deeper soil from moving. So the question is – what is the profile of Martian soil in this area?