Distorted floor of a Martian crater
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on February 18, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the science team labels “Mantle Layers in Southern Mid-Latitudes.”
I would be less vague. These strangely shaped features invoke the typical glacial features seen throughout the mid-latitudes of Mars. The knobs and outcrops suggest some underlying breakdown that the top layers of glacial material has covered. They also suggest some form of sublimation or erosion process to the glacier itself.
The white rectangle inside the inset on the overview map above marks this location, covering the floor of an unnamed 10-mile-wide crater in the cratered southern highlands at 41 degrees south. In this region all the craters show some evidence of this sublimation, all suggesting that there is a near-surface underlying ice layer that when exposed vanishes to leave depressions or hollows. Here however it appears that ice layer is mostly intact, the knobs and ridges indicating the shape of the bedrock and large breakdown below.
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.
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3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
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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 original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on February 18, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the science team labels “Mantle Layers in Southern Mid-Latitudes.”
I would be less vague. These strangely shaped features invoke the typical glacial features seen throughout the mid-latitudes of Mars. The knobs and outcrops suggest some underlying breakdown that the top layers of glacial material has covered. They also suggest some form of sublimation or erosion process to the glacier itself.
The white rectangle inside the inset on the overview map above marks this location, covering the floor of an unnamed 10-mile-wide crater in the cratered southern highlands at 41 degrees south. In this region all the craters show some evidence of this sublimation, all suggesting that there is a near-surface underlying ice layer that when exposed vanishes to leave depressions or hollows. Here however it appears that ice layer is mostly intact, the knobs and ridges indicating the shape of the bedrock and large breakdown below.
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.
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