Mars’ icy high latitudes
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on November 29, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Labeled simply as “periglacial survey,” it is one of almost two hundred such images taken by MRO over the years, almost all of which are in the high latitudes above 60 degrees, with most being in the southern hemisphere. Most appear to be close to or above Mars’s Arctic Circle, which means these are locations that will see little or no sunlight for a portion of the year.
I have been unable to contact the scientists doing this survey, so I will have to make an educated guess as to its purpose and goals. “Periglacial” refers to the outer fringes or margin of a glacier or large ice sheet. Thus, in the context of this survey, the scientists appear to be studying places where they think the Martian high latitude ice sheets are beginning to sublimate away. Today’s photo is a good example. It is located at 67 degrees south latitude, in the southern cratered highlands but in an area that appears to be relatively free of craters. Instead, the terrain appears somewhat flat with only periodic depressions and scarps. The MRO context camera photo below of the same area, rotated, cropped, and expanded to post here, illustrates this.
Click for full image.
The black box marks the area covered by the close-up photo. As you can see, what looked like an east-west channel in the close-up was merely a longer enclosed depression.
In fact, the whole region reminds me of what you see if you finely spray hot water on a sheet of ice. Patches begin to melt away randomly, producing holes and depressions.
In the close-up one also gets the strong sense that everything here is either frozen ice or is dust and dirt that is impregnated within it, so much so that everything has become smoothed as the ice has gone through numerous cycles of freezing and sublimation over the eons. There are no dunes, and though the dark streaks indicate dust devil tracks there certainly appears to be little surface dust.
The photo and its features, as well as this entire periglacial survey, strongly invokes a vision of a very icy Mars in its high latitudes. While scientists have found many glacial features in the latitude bands from 30 to 60 degrees latitude, what this photo suggests is that at higher latitudes the ground is almost entirely covered by an ice sheet.
As I’ve said before, Mars is a desert like Antarctica, icy, cold, and very dry. In building future colonies that coldest place on Earth probably gives us the best analogy for the environment on Mars.
The support of my readers through the years has given 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. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
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. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to 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.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five 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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5. 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. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on November 29, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Labeled simply as “periglacial survey,” it is one of almost two hundred such images taken by MRO over the years, almost all of which are in the high latitudes above 60 degrees, with most being in the southern hemisphere. Most appear to be close to or above Mars’s Arctic Circle, which means these are locations that will see little or no sunlight for a portion of the year.
I have been unable to contact the scientists doing this survey, so I will have to make an educated guess as to its purpose and goals. “Periglacial” refers to the outer fringes or margin of a glacier or large ice sheet. Thus, in the context of this survey, the scientists appear to be studying places where they think the Martian high latitude ice sheets are beginning to sublimate away. Today’s photo is a good example. It is located at 67 degrees south latitude, in the southern cratered highlands but in an area that appears to be relatively free of craters. Instead, the terrain appears somewhat flat with only periodic depressions and scarps. The MRO context camera photo below of the same area, rotated, cropped, and expanded to post here, illustrates this.
Click for full image.
The black box marks the area covered by the close-up photo. As you can see, what looked like an east-west channel in the close-up was merely a longer enclosed depression.
In fact, the whole region reminds me of what you see if you finely spray hot water on a sheet of ice. Patches begin to melt away randomly, producing holes and depressions.
In the close-up one also gets the strong sense that everything here is either frozen ice or is dust and dirt that is impregnated within it, so much so that everything has become smoothed as the ice has gone through numerous cycles of freezing and sublimation over the eons. There are no dunes, and though the dark streaks indicate dust devil tracks there certainly appears to be little surface dust.
The photo and its features, as well as this entire periglacial survey, strongly invokes a vision of a very icy Mars in its high latitudes. While scientists have found many glacial features in the latitude bands from 30 to 60 degrees latitude, what this photo suggests is that at higher latitudes the ground is almost entirely covered by an ice sheet.
As I’ve said before, Mars is a desert like Antarctica, icy, cold, and very dry. In building future colonies that coldest place on Earth probably gives us the best analogy for the environment on Mars.
The support of my readers through the years has given 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. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
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. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to 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.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five 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:
5. 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. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
I have often talked about living quarters created under the ice by melting holes in the carbon dioxide ice and extracting the plentiful water, methane, nitrogen for necessary components for sustainable life on Mars.
This is exactly the landscape that I pictured in my head for the first Mars colony. The hard to find necessary resources “here” can supply other colony locations and research stations across Mars indefinitely. (or just until other resources have been located and infrastructure built and go online)
Mostly dust free, Iron meteorites littering the ice surface, not so rough to be unmanageable for robotic metal detectors.
Coolant for nuclear reactors easily available for a large manufacturing facility. (heat necessary for underground farming/sunbathing and hot tubs…)
Hydrogen air ships will do a lively business providing finished materials in trade to the distant locations and research stations.
I almost wish I could be there.
The permafrost-zone of Mars?
Brad: Yup, I think you are correct.