In my regular trolling through the images sent down from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), I sometimes come across things that imply truly exciting future missions. That happened when in 2019 I found a bunch of photos each labeled as a “candidate landing site for SpaceX Starship”. Without fanfare SpaceX had begun researching locations for where it intended to land Starship on Mars, in the northern lowland plains, research that it later solidified considerably.

Similarly, I have found MRO images in 2022 suggesting scientists were thinking of running a helicopter mission inside Valles Marineris, the largest canyon in the solar system. Another image in 2024 suggested that a helicopter mission might go to another region in Mars’s southern cratered highlands.

The image to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, is another new example of a potential Martian helicopter mission. It was taken on August 19, 2025 and is labeled provocatively “Characterize Possible Rotorcraft Landing Site.” Unlike the previous two proposed helicopter locations, however — which appeared to be aimed at uncertain NASA funding — this image’s location suggests it is far more certain, and might launch far sooner than you can imagine.

The black cross on overview map to the right marks the location, in the northern fringes of the Erebus Mountains and only 79 miles from Starship prime landing site #2. It is also only 30 to 40 miles from secondary candidate landing sites #1 and #5.

Why fly a helicopter here? The picture explains why. This region is known to have a lot of near surface ice, some of which is thought to be just a few feet below the surface. The mottled terrain to the right suggests exactly that, with the mottling caused as that near surface ice sublimated away over time.

Note the craters. None appear to be impact craters, since they have no rims or splash aprons. Instead, these appear to be sinkholes, possibly caused as well by underground sublimation of that ice. Moreover, just a few hundred feet to the west is an 800-foot-high peak with a crater at its top, clearly resembling a small volcano. In this case, however, the material ejected from that caldera was likely ice-impregnated mud.

Or at least, that’s my guess. To confirm these guesses you’d have to send a rover or helicopter there to take a closer look.

In other words, some scientist or someone at SpaceX is researching the idea of loading a helicopter onto one of the early Starship Mars missions, and requested this image because this would be a great place to send it. And based on Elon Musk’s preliminary Starship Mars plans, announced in May 2025 and shown in the graphic below, there will be plenty of opportunities in the next decade to do so.

The Musk preliminary game plan for sending Starship landers to Mars over the next few years. Click for source.

All of this is guesswork on my part, but I don’t think my guesses are far off the mark. Starship provides scientists a great opportunity to do ground-breaking work that had previously been considered impossible because of cost and the weight limitations of the available rockets. Starship’s reusable design and incredible power changes that paradigm entirely. The cost will drop so much that private citizens or companies could finance such missions, getting great publicity in the process.

The future American space program being run by SpaceX is going to be something truly to behold.