Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 30, 2026 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label as “honeycomb terrain,” though to think that explains what we are looking at is to live in a fantasy world.

I could easily place this image in my category of Martian “What the heck?!” images, pictures of geological features that defy any clear explanation at all. Near surface ice and glacial activity certainly played a part in forming this geology, as this location is at 39 degrees south latitude, well within the mid-latitudes of Mars where both are found routinely.

Crater impacts also played some part, or at least, some of the round depressions might have been formed by a bolide striking this ice-impregnated ground, causing it to quickly melt, flow, and then refreeze.

But why the swirls? That is a question I have no theory to explain. Nor does a wider look help much.

The white dot on the overview map to the right marks the location, about seven miles north of the downstream end of the glacial-filled canyon dubbed Dao Vallis, as it begins to drain into Hellas Basin, the death valley of Mars.

My first guess was that the swirls are the eddies of a glacier flowing inside a canyon, but these swirls are located on the plateau above the canyons to the south and to the east. Thus, if they indicate any flow patterns those patterns are not determined by any obvious downgrade.

MRO altimeter data suggests the flat mesa on the picture’s right is the high point — sitting about 100 feet above the surrounding swirls, with those swirls flowing around it. Yet that same data does not show any obvious downgrade in that surrounding flow.

MRO images of the western floor of Hellas basin, at its deepest point, show many features similar to these swirls that scientists have labeled “taffy terrain.” That taffy remains unexplained as well, though the present theory ascribes their formation to the flow of some “viscous fluid”, as yet unidentified.

The geology of Mars continues to baffle. It is strange and alien, though given time and some hands-on exploration, I am fully confident that future generations will untangle its mysteries.