The barren and icy northern lowland plains of Mars
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and sharpened to post here, was taken on January 2, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Taken to fill a gap in the camera’s planned image schedule in order to maintain its temperature, the location was in this sense picked not for any particular scientific research project, but because the camera team decided they might find something interesting at this spot.
What they found is a vast flat plain of polygons, a feature found frequently on the surface of Mars and thought to be formed from processes similar to the drying that creates similar polygon cracks in dried mud here on Earth. In this case, the cracks are almost certainly in ice. As Colin Dundas of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Astrogeology Science Center in Arizona explained to me previously,
The crack patterns are likely thermal contraction cracks, which form in shallowly buried ice due to seasonal temperature changes causing it to expand and contract. When that repeats over many years it creates regular patterns of cracks that organize themselves into polygons.
The white dot north of Kunowsky Crater on the overview map to the right marks the location, at 59 degrees north latitude in the northern lowland plains of Mars.
The lowland plains of Mars are not always so flat and boringly the same. It as many craters, canyons, mounds, hills, and mud volcanoes. Nonetheless, much of the terrain is similar to today’s cool image. We are likely looking at giant ice sheets near the surface that have acted to obliterate or bury most of the topographic variations.
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 original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and sharpened to post here, was taken on January 2, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Taken to fill a gap in the camera’s planned image schedule in order to maintain its temperature, the location was in this sense picked not for any particular scientific research project, but because the camera team decided they might find something interesting at this spot.
What they found is a vast flat plain of polygons, a feature found frequently on the surface of Mars and thought to be formed from processes similar to the drying that creates similar polygon cracks in dried mud here on Earth. In this case, the cracks are almost certainly in ice. As Colin Dundas of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Astrogeology Science Center in Arizona explained to me previously,
The crack patterns are likely thermal contraction cracks, which form in shallowly buried ice due to seasonal temperature changes causing it to expand and contract. When that repeats over many years it creates regular patterns of cracks that organize themselves into polygons.
The white dot north of Kunowsky Crater on the overview map to the right marks the location, at 59 degrees north latitude in the northern lowland plains of Mars.
The lowland plains of Mars are not always so flat and boringly the same. It as many craters, canyons, mounds, hills, and mud volcanoes. Nonetheless, much of the terrain is similar to today’s cool image. We are likely looking at giant ice sheets near the surface that have acted to obliterate or bury most of the topographic variations.
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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