Glacial ice sheets on Mars?
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on June 29, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The location is in Mars’ glacier country, that strip of chaos terrain that runs about 2,000 miles along the transition zone between the northern lowland plains and the southern cratered highlands at 30 to 47 degrees north latitude. This particular feature is located in Deuteronilus Mensae, the westernmost region of that strip of chaos.
I call this glacier country because practically every image taken by MRO’s high resolution camera in this region suggests the presence of glacial material covered by a protective layer of debris. The photo to the right is typical, though a bit more puzzling because of the depressions that appear to run along highpoints.
As usual, the overview map below helps explain what we are looking at.
The red rectangle marks the location of the above image. The white rectangle marks the location of an earlier cool image from May 2020.
As you can see, both images cover the edge of a large apron of material that is descending down from a collection of high buttes. Though the overview map suggests the downhill grade should be to the north, in the picture itself it appears the flows are heading south, both in that ridgeline depression as well as in the meandering hollows to its east.
The ridgeline depression suggests that a glacier flowed south into the largest wide depression, with some of that flow breaking out through a gap on its southern wall.
Overall, the inconclusive downhill grade suggests that we are actually looking at broken ice sheets, protected from sublimation by a thin layer of dust and debris. This supposition becomes even more obvious in the full image. Apparently, the apron of glacial material and alluvial debris that surrounds the buttes are in turn surrounded in the flats by cracking ice sheets.
While this region will afford settlers ample and easily accessible water, the roughness of the terrain will likely not make it an initial prime target for colonization. Too difficult for landing, and too difficult to travel through.
Someday, however, when many humans live on Mars, this land will be an inviting target. Not only will it provide that water, the buttes will likely make other resources readily available for mining.
The map below shows this entire 2,000-mile-long strip of glacier-filled chaos, with the red dot marking the location of today’s image.
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 June 29, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The location is in Mars’ glacier country, that strip of chaos terrain that runs about 2,000 miles along the transition zone between the northern lowland plains and the southern cratered highlands at 30 to 47 degrees north latitude. This particular feature is located in Deuteronilus Mensae, the westernmost region of that strip of chaos.
I call this glacier country because practically every image taken by MRO’s high resolution camera in this region suggests the presence of glacial material covered by a protective layer of debris. The photo to the right is typical, though a bit more puzzling because of the depressions that appear to run along highpoints.
As usual, the overview map below helps explain what we are looking at.
The red rectangle marks the location of the above image. The white rectangle marks the location of an earlier cool image from May 2020.
As you can see, both images cover the edge of a large apron of material that is descending down from a collection of high buttes. Though the overview map suggests the downhill grade should be to the north, in the picture itself it appears the flows are heading south, both in that ridgeline depression as well as in the meandering hollows to its east.
The ridgeline depression suggests that a glacier flowed south into the largest wide depression, with some of that flow breaking out through a gap on its southern wall.
Overall, the inconclusive downhill grade suggests that we are actually looking at broken ice sheets, protected from sublimation by a thin layer of dust and debris. This supposition becomes even more obvious in the full image. Apparently, the apron of glacial material and alluvial debris that surrounds the buttes are in turn surrounded in the flats by cracking ice sheets.
While this region will afford settlers ample and easily accessible water, the roughness of the terrain will likely not make it an initial prime target for colonization. Too difficult for landing, and too difficult to travel through.
Someday, however, when many humans live on Mars, this land will be an inviting target. Not only will it provide that water, the buttes will likely make other resources readily available for mining.
The map below shows this entire 2,000-mile-long strip of glacier-filled chaos, with the red dot marking the location of today’s image.
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.
Bob,
That photo almost looks like a ESM of something organic. Mars is so weird. Keep them coming and I’ll keep marveling at how something so close can be so different.
Thanks again