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Readers!

 

It is now July, time once again to celebrate the start of this webpage in 2010 with my annual July fund-raising campaign.

 

This year I celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black. During that time I have done more than 33,000 posts, mostly covering the global space industry and the related planetary and astronomical science that comes from it. Along the way I have also felt compelled as a free American citizen to regularly post my thoughts on the politics and culture of the time, partly because I think it is important for free Americans to do so, and partly because those politics and that culture have a direct impact on the future of our civilization and its on-going efforts to explore and eventually colonize the solar system.

 

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Perseverance gets a glimpse into the history of Jezero crater

A glimpse into the history of Jezero Crater
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on August 17, 2022 by one of Perseverance’s high resolution camera. It shows the exposed layers of a nearby cliff face that comprises the end of the delta that once flowed into Jezero Crater in the distant Martian past.

My guess is that this cliff is about 20 feet high. The more massive, thicker and younger layers near the top, compared to the thinner and older layers below, suggest a major change in the cyclic events. The early cycles that lay down this delta were initially shorter and able to place less material with each cycle, while the last few cycles were longer, producing thicker layers.

The difference in layers also strongly suggests that all the blocks at the foot of the cliff fell from more massive layers at the top. Material that broke off from the lower thinner layers has likely long ago eroded away.

Genesis cover

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

5 comments

  • Cotour

    Q: And the thrust upward is do too?

    * Plate tectonics? (Is there plate tectonics on Mars?)
    * Volcano’s?
    * Earthquakes?

    All of the above?

    Obviously, there was plenty of water on Mars at one time.

  • Cotour: You really should read my webpage sometime. If you did, you would already know there are no plate tectonics on Mars, that volcanic activity played a large part in its geologic surface, that earthquakes do occur, and that there is plenty of surface water ice on Mars, NOW.

    I probably post on these subjects at least twice a day, and have been doing so for about ten years. It is too bad you had trouble finding those posts. :)

  • Cotour

    I hear you.

    (If you have not noticed over that time, I am primarily focused on other things :)

  • Greg the Geologist

    Note that the “major change in the cyclic events” could be very local, such as a channel deposit. We’d have to see if those more massive (less laminated) upper strata persist laterally, or pinch out. The rover might be able to determine that, but of course it will be best to have Boots on the Ground.

  • Chris

    Plate tectonics
    Mars quakes creating upward thrust

    I think we need a ‘we think” on these

    Volcanos – probably reasonable evidence for thse

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