Glaciers everywhere in Mars’ glacier country
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and annotated to post here, was taken on August 24, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows glaciers apparently flowing down from two different mesas to the north and south.
The arrows indicate a major glacial stream coming from two directions. The many layered flow on the image’s upper right illustrates the many past climate cycles of Mars, with each subsequent period of snowfall and glacial growth producing progressively less ice. The chaotic region in the lower right marks what I think is the lowest point between the two mesas. Here the flows form eddies as the glaciers collide.
The overview map below shows us why there are so many glaciers at this spot on Mars.
The white cross marks this location, smack dab in the middle of the 2,000-mile-long mid-latitude strip I dub glacier country. Practically every MRO high resolution image of this region shows glacier features, as indicated by the inset. Each numbered black dot marks a previous MRO cool image showing glaciers. (Go here for links to these earlier images.) The red dot marks today’s picture. The entire surface of this region, from the tops of mesas to the canyon floors between, appear covered with ancient flowing ice.
At present the data suggests — but is not confirmed — that these glaciers are inactive. The present Martian climate, combined with the dust and debris that covers them, has allowed their past motion to be frozen and locked, now unchanging.
Someday that will change. The planet’s rotational tilt will shift, and either water from the poles will fall here as snow, causing the glaciers to flow downhill once again, or the temperature will warm and the ice will sublimate away, the glaciers shrinking as their water migrates back to fall as snow at the poles.
The region will also likely change, come the future, but not from climate change. Someday humans will be here, mining the ice for water.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and annotated to post here, was taken on August 24, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows glaciers apparently flowing down from two different mesas to the north and south.
The arrows indicate a major glacial stream coming from two directions. The many layered flow on the image’s upper right illustrates the many past climate cycles of Mars, with each subsequent period of snowfall and glacial growth producing progressively less ice. The chaotic region in the lower right marks what I think is the lowest point between the two mesas. Here the flows form eddies as the glaciers collide.
The overview map below shows us why there are so many glaciers at this spot on Mars.
The white cross marks this location, smack dab in the middle of the 2,000-mile-long mid-latitude strip I dub glacier country. Practically every MRO high resolution image of this region shows glacier features, as indicated by the inset. Each numbered black dot marks a previous MRO cool image showing glaciers. (Go here for links to these earlier images.) The red dot marks today’s picture. The entire surface of this region, from the tops of mesas to the canyon floors between, appear covered with ancient flowing ice.
At present the data suggests — but is not confirmed — that these glaciers are inactive. The present Martian climate, combined with the dust and debris that covers them, has allowed their past motion to be frozen and locked, now unchanging.
Someday that will change. The planet’s rotational tilt will shift, and either water from the poles will fall here as snow, causing the glaciers to flow downhill once again, or the temperature will warm and the ice will sublimate away, the glaciers shrinking as their water migrates back to fall as snow at the poles.
The region will also likely change, come the future, but not from climate change. Someday humans will be here, mining the ice for water.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
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