A visit to a crater near the non-face on Mars
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on March 12, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It looks down at small six-mile-wide Apt crater in the northern lowland plains of Mars located at about 40 degrees north latitude. The image’s focus were the layers on the crater interior rim as well as the eroded glacial features on the crater’s floor. The color strip suggests [pdf] that the bluish material on the north-facing south interior rim and floor are likely icy, while the tan-colored material seen in the crater’s north half are likely dusty.
While the suggestion of glacial material on the crater’s interior is very typical for many craters in the mid-latitudes, what makes this crater of interest is its location, only a short few miles south of that mesa on Mars that for decades the shallow-minded insisted was a face and proof of an alien Martian civilization.
On the overview map to the right the black dot marks the location of that non-face on Mars, which has been imaged now at high resolution numerous times, and shown unequivocally to be nothing more than an ordinary mesa. The white dot just below it, only a few miles away, is the subject crater above.
The region the crater is in is dubbed Cydonia, the unusual geography of which helped encourage the many wild theories about Martian civilizations during the past few decades. As I noted in a post about Cydonia in March 2021,
Cydonia sits mostly in the northern lowlands. Though the region has many knobs and mesas that resemble the chaos terrain like the glacier country in Deuteronilus Mensae to the east, much of its chaos appears to be in its final stages of erosion, so that it is more a plain of small knobs and mesas than a region of cross-cutting canyons with large mesas in-between. Thus if there is buried ice here, rather than finding it in glaciers flowing off mesas it is more probably locked in underground ice sheets, as suggested in the lower right of today’s cool image.
Apparently, based on the image above, the craters in Cydonia do have glacial features.
Click for full image.
Now for Mars’ nearby non-face, shown in the image to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, and taken on April 5, 2007 by MRO’s high resolution camera. As one of the first images of the “face” taken by MRO, it confirmed what Mars Global Surveyor had already proven years before, that this is nothing more than a mesa.
However, looking at the mesa with the knowledge we now have of the large amount of glacial material found in the mid-latitudes, the features on it now make some sense. Notice for example the broken layers on the mesa’s north side. These suggest glacial material, as if a corroding glacier is resting against that slope. Anyone who has been to Glacial National Park will recognize the features.
The color strip also reinforces this conclusion. Like the crater above, the tan colors on the mesa’s top suggest dust and dirt, while those glacial-like slope features have bluish tones that suggest the presence of ice.
The face on Mars was not a face, but it now reveals something about Mars that for future colonists that is quite significant. There is water here, accessible for the future human Martians to drink.
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, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on March 12, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It looks down at small six-mile-wide Apt crater in the northern lowland plains of Mars located at about 40 degrees north latitude. The image’s focus were the layers on the crater interior rim as well as the eroded glacial features on the crater’s floor. The color strip suggests [pdf] that the bluish material on the north-facing south interior rim and floor are likely icy, while the tan-colored material seen in the crater’s north half are likely dusty.
While the suggestion of glacial material on the crater’s interior is very typical for many craters in the mid-latitudes, what makes this crater of interest is its location, only a short few miles south of that mesa on Mars that for decades the shallow-minded insisted was a face and proof of an alien Martian civilization.
On the overview map to the right the black dot marks the location of that non-face on Mars, which has been imaged now at high resolution numerous times, and shown unequivocally to be nothing more than an ordinary mesa. The white dot just below it, only a few miles away, is the subject crater above.
The region the crater is in is dubbed Cydonia, the unusual geography of which helped encourage the many wild theories about Martian civilizations during the past few decades. As I noted in a post about Cydonia in March 2021,
Cydonia sits mostly in the northern lowlands. Though the region has many knobs and mesas that resemble the chaos terrain like the glacier country in Deuteronilus Mensae to the east, much of its chaos appears to be in its final stages of erosion, so that it is more a plain of small knobs and mesas than a region of cross-cutting canyons with large mesas in-between. Thus if there is buried ice here, rather than finding it in glaciers flowing off mesas it is more probably locked in underground ice sheets, as suggested in the lower right of today’s cool image.
Apparently, based on the image above, the craters in Cydonia do have glacial features.
Click for full image.
Now for Mars’ nearby non-face, shown in the image to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, and taken on April 5, 2007 by MRO’s high resolution camera. As one of the first images of the “face” taken by MRO, it confirmed what Mars Global Surveyor had already proven years before, that this is nothing more than a mesa.
However, looking at the mesa with the knowledge we now have of the large amount of glacial material found in the mid-latitudes, the features on it now make some sense. Notice for example the broken layers on the mesa’s north side. These suggest glacial material, as if a corroding glacier is resting against that slope. Anyone who has been to Glacial National Park will recognize the features.
The color strip also reinforces this conclusion. Like the crater above, the tan colors on the mesa’s top suggest dust and dirt, while those glacial-like slope features have bluish tones that suggest the presence of ice.
The face on Mars was not a face, but it now reveals something about Mars that for future colonists that is quite significant. There is water here, accessible for the future human Martians to drink.
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.
This shallow minded reader would appreciate a 3rd party not associated with NASA or Malin doing a proper re-image of the face and releasing the unaltered data to the public.
Also, I guess I’m too shallow to contribute to Behind the Black again.
Yes, because everyone who has sent probes to Mars (USA,USSR/Russia, China, India, Japan, UAE, and ESA) is lying about what’s at Cydonia. The entire space industrial complex has decided it’s in their best interests to hide the truth from us. Yada, yada, yada.
I see a bulldog; a rabbit and the head of a bear.
I see an opportunity for Musk here. Have Coast-to-Coast AM raise funds for a big rover atop a Falcon Heavy…. and have it go where Hoagland wants…JPL gets a side feed for a change.
Cydonia may not be of much interest to the planetary scientists-but it is one additional asset they can inherit once the Face-believers are bored…declared ‘victory’ or whatever…. and Musk gets rid of end of life cores he wouldn’t sell to a legit customer, especially after Starship is in service. Not all cores can go to museums…but if they can-fine. This could start a trend. Everybody wins.