“Flow-like” feature in the Martian lowlands
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and brightness-enhanced to post here, was taken on July 6, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
This is an uncaptioned image, labeled by the MRO science team as a “Flow-Like Feature in Chryse Planitia,” suggesting that they themselves are not exactly sure about what we are looking at. The latitude is 19 degrees north, which is a bit too far south for finding glacial features. Moreover, the craggy look of the ground here does not suggest an eroding glacier, but of eroding bedrock.
We could be looking at a volcanic feature, but this location is very far from Mars’ volcano regions. Nonetheless, another high resolution image, taken just to the west of this photo and given the exact same label, shows similar geology, and does strongly invoke a look of corroded lava flow.
The overview map below gives the context.
Chryse Planitia is the lowland northern plain that received the drainage down from the giant Martian volcanoes, coming from both Valles Marineris and Kasei Valles. It is also the place that two American landers put down, Viking 1 in 1976 and Pathfinder in 1997. In fact, this image, indicated by the white box, is only about 108 miles west of the Mars Pathfinder landing site where the rover Sojourner roved for almost three months. The photo below shows Sojourner up against a boulder, the image taken from Pathfinder. The ramp that the rover used to get to the surface can be seen on the bottom left.
The results from Pathfinder and Sojourner suggested the presence of melted ejecta from impacts, melt from volcanic processes, and sedimentary and rounded rocks suggesting water processes.
None of this of course clarifies the flow feature in the cool image above, as all these process could have created this feature. It only adds to the mystery.
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Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and brightness-enhanced to post here, was taken on July 6, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
This is an uncaptioned image, labeled by the MRO science team as a “Flow-Like Feature in Chryse Planitia,” suggesting that they themselves are not exactly sure about what we are looking at. The latitude is 19 degrees north, which is a bit too far south for finding glacial features. Moreover, the craggy look of the ground here does not suggest an eroding glacier, but of eroding bedrock.
We could be looking at a volcanic feature, but this location is very far from Mars’ volcano regions. Nonetheless, another high resolution image, taken just to the west of this photo and given the exact same label, shows similar geology, and does strongly invoke a look of corroded lava flow.
The overview map below gives the context.
Chryse Planitia is the lowland northern plain that received the drainage down from the giant Martian volcanoes, coming from both Valles Marineris and Kasei Valles. It is also the place that two American landers put down, Viking 1 in 1976 and Pathfinder in 1997. In fact, this image, indicated by the white box, is only about 108 miles west of the Mars Pathfinder landing site where the rover Sojourner roved for almost three months. The photo below shows Sojourner up against a boulder, the image taken from Pathfinder. The ramp that the rover used to get to the surface can be seen on the bottom left.
The results from Pathfinder and Sojourner suggested the presence of melted ejecta from impacts, melt from volcanic processes, and sedimentary and rounded rocks suggesting water processes.
None of this of course clarifies the flow feature in the cool image above, as all these process could have created this feature. It only adds to the mystery.
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.
I don’t know why 19 degrees south would be too close to the equator. According to theory, Mars’ inclination varies wildly over the eons. Suppose, a billion years ago, the tilt was 70 degrees, and we could consider 19 degrees south to have near polar conditions. Just a thought.
Rod: I think you are new here. Do a search on Behind the Black for glaciers and Mars. You will learn a lot.
Start however here: The glaciers of Mars. At this moment, scientists have found glacial features in large numbers in the latitude bands from 30 to 60 degrees. Farther south the evidence of water ice peters out, though not in every place.
At 19 degrees it is unlikely this is glacial. Moreover, if you look at the many cool images that will come up in that search, you will begin to understand why this does not look like a glacier to me. The features aren’t the same as seen in the many other examples.
However, you are right about Mars’ inclination, or obliquity as the scientists have told me is the correct term. It changes a lot over eons, from 11 degrees to 60 degrees. Today it is about 25 degrees. Things would have been very different when that obliquity was different. Once again, read some of those other links for info on what is presently believed.