The icy Reull Valley of Mars
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on February 20, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the eroded floor of a 10-mile-wide very obscured unnamed crater that sits above the northern wall of a canyon dubbed Reull Valles.
For reference the interior slope of the crater’s southern rim is labelled. The crater sits at 40 degrees south latitude. Thus, this crater is inside the 30 to 60 degree mid-latitude bands where scientists have found many glaciers on Mars. The eroded floor of this crater appears to confirm this conclusion. In the full photo the erosion is even more pronounced, as well as more chaotic, farther from that rim to the north.
Because Reull Valles sits inside that southern glacial band, it is home to much evidence of ice. The overview map below provides the context.
The blue rectangular just to the north of Reull Valles near the right marks this photo’s location. Reull flows into Hellas Basin, the basement of Mars. Photos both inside and outside of this canyon almost always show evidence of glacial features, including areas where the canyon floor appears completely covered by a glacier flowing down into Hellas.
Above the canyon ice is evident either in craters (like this picture) or on the slopes of mountains. Though believed to be inactive, that belief is not fully confirmed, and in fact will be one of the first major science questions Martian scientists will attempt to answer, when they have the ability to take core samples throughout the planet, from the poles to the equator.
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 full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on February 20, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the eroded floor of a 10-mile-wide very obscured unnamed crater that sits above the northern wall of a canyon dubbed Reull Valles.
For reference the interior slope of the crater’s southern rim is labelled. The crater sits at 40 degrees south latitude. Thus, this crater is inside the 30 to 60 degree mid-latitude bands where scientists have found many glaciers on Mars. The eroded floor of this crater appears to confirm this conclusion. In the full photo the erosion is even more pronounced, as well as more chaotic, farther from that rim to the north.
Because Reull Valles sits inside that southern glacial band, it is home to much evidence of ice. The overview map below provides the context.
The blue rectangular just to the north of Reull Valles near the right marks this photo’s location. Reull flows into Hellas Basin, the basement of Mars. Photos both inside and outside of this canyon almost always show evidence of glacial features, including areas where the canyon floor appears completely covered by a glacier flowing down into Hellas.
Above the canyon ice is evident either in craters (like this picture) or on the slopes of mountains. Though believed to be inactive, that belief is not fully confirmed, and in fact will be one of the first major science questions Martian scientists will attempt to answer, when they have the ability to take core samples throughout the planet, from the poles to the equator.
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
Mars has always been a mysterious planet. The current climate of Mars is not habitable and not at all similar to Earth’s. But this might be a fact that the red planet was possibly more similar to our blue planet at the time life bloomed on Earth (3 Gy ago). Another reason to believe it is the satellite evidence of water in Mar’s own Grand Canyon.
Know more about the discovery
https://earthsky.org/space/scientists-find-water-under-mars-grand-canyon/
According to a research of https://penmypaper.com/, InSight Mars Lander has recorded the largest Marsquakes till date in the Valles Marineris with a magnitude of 4.2 in August 2021, preceding 4.1 in September 2021 and 3.7 in 2019. Knowing the planet’s tremor history with consistently increasing magnitude, I wonder if it’s planning to pop out life from the cracks.