Cracked ash-filled Martian terrain
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on September 26, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The science team labeled this “Possible Pit,” but other than a small dark stain on the rim of a crater north of the section cropped to the right, I could find nothing that even closely resembled a pit. More likely the scientists were referring to the large circular depression in the top center of this picture. It does not at first glance look like a crater, as it has no obvious rim. In fact, almost none of the circular depressions in this image look like craters, as almost none have uplifted rims.
However, it is not clear what caused these dust-filled fractures as well as the image’s many circular depressions. The location, as indicated by the overview map below, does not really help.
The small red dot, south of Cerberus Fossae and inside the Medusae Fossae Formation, Mars’s biggest deposit of volcanic ash, marks the location of these cracks. Though this is very close to one of the large quakes detected by InSight, these cracks are much much older.
Because this is near the equator, there is no near surface ice here. This is very dry terrain. Being inside Medusae Fossae explains the amount of ash filling the fissures and pits. In fact, it could be we are seeing chaos terrain whose intersecting canyons are almost entirely filled with that ash.
Or not. Maybe the ash is so thick here that impacts don’t form rims, but disappear into the ash like a hot pebble falling into ice.
This is also in a region of many vast flood lava plains. The surface here is likely lava, but why it has these cracks and fissures is beyond my status as an amateur geologist to explain.
The support of my readers through the years has given 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. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
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. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to 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.
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Click for original image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on September 26, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The science team labeled this “Possible Pit,” but other than a small dark stain on the rim of a crater north of the section cropped to the right, I could find nothing that even closely resembled a pit. More likely the scientists were referring to the large circular depression in the top center of this picture. It does not at first glance look like a crater, as it has no obvious rim. In fact, almost none of the circular depressions in this image look like craters, as almost none have uplifted rims.
However, it is not clear what caused these dust-filled fractures as well as the image’s many circular depressions. The location, as indicated by the overview map below, does not really help.
The small red dot, south of Cerberus Fossae and inside the Medusae Fossae Formation, Mars’s biggest deposit of volcanic ash, marks the location of these cracks. Though this is very close to one of the large quakes detected by InSight, these cracks are much much older.
Because this is near the equator, there is no near surface ice here. This is very dry terrain. Being inside Medusae Fossae explains the amount of ash filling the fissures and pits. In fact, it could be we are seeing chaos terrain whose intersecting canyons are almost entirely filled with that ash.
Or not. Maybe the ash is so thick here that impacts don’t form rims, but disappear into the ash like a hot pebble falling into ice.
This is also in a region of many vast flood lava plains. The surface here is likely lava, but why it has these cracks and fissures is beyond my status as an amateur geologist to explain.
The support of my readers through the years has given 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. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
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. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to 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.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five 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:
5. 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. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
“The science team labeled this “Possible Pit,” but other than a small dark stain on the rim of a crater north of the section cropped to the right, I could find nothing that even closely resembled a pit”
Look for a white stain.
On your original link, there are some dark holes near what looks like white ejecta. Something new…