Corroding glacial debris inside Martian crater
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 5, 2026 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
The science team labels this “irregular cellular structures on crater floor.” Located at 46 degrees south latitude in the Martian southern cratered highlands, we are likely looking at glacial debris that has been significantly corroded, the near surface ice sublimating away in patches because the dirt and dust that protects it has for some reason done a poor job.
In this case however the sublimation has produced these very strange features, very different than corroding subsurface ice features seen elsewhere on Mars. Reminds me of peeling paint, but even that analogy falls short.
The white dot on the overview map to the right marks the location of this unnamed 23-mile-wide crater, deep inside the southern cratered highlands. The crater itself is about 4,000 feet deep, so hiking in would almost be like hiking into the Grand Canyon.
If you look closely at the inset, you can see that the corroding glacial debris seems concentrated in the southern part of the crater floor. It is that part of that floor that will get the most sunlight throughout the year, thus providing a possible explanation for why this glacial debris appears to be sublimating away.
This location is also on the farthest southwest edge of the flood lava that poured down from the Tharsis Bulge about 1,500 miles to the northeast, coming from the giant volcanoes there and partly burying some of the older craters nearby. The heat of that lava could have also played a part in determining the amount of ice remaining in this crater.
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