Weird dome near Starship candidate landing zone on Mars
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on February 27, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label as domes in Arcadia Planitia, one of the many large northern lowland plains of Mars.
This to me is a “What the heck?” image. I won’t dare try to explain the warped concentric ringed pattern at the top of the mesa, nor the bright and dark splotch that surrounds it. The small craters around it appear to have glacier material within them, and the terrain here likely has a lot of near surface ice, being at 37 degrees north latitude in a region where the data suggests such ice exists. The different colors here likely indicate the difference between dust (orange) and coarser material (aqua).
The location, as shown in the overview map below, makes this mesa more tantalizing.
The orange dot halfway between the Phelgra and Erebus mountains marks this location, several hundred miles from several prime candidate landing spots for SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft. Images of the numbered sites can be found here.
Such domes in this region are not unusual. See for example this cool image from March 2023. As I noted then,
This is a flat plain interspersed with crater splats, mounds of a variety of sizes, and a puzzling meandering dark line that suggests a crack from which material is oozing.
None of the mounds in that image however had the linear features of today’s mound, which only makes the formation of this particular alien mound more perplexing.
The first Starship visitors to this region are going to have a lot of strange things to explore and study.
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 or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on February 27, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label as domes in Arcadia Planitia, one of the many large northern lowland plains of Mars.
This to me is a “What the heck?” image. I won’t dare try to explain the warped concentric ringed pattern at the top of the mesa, nor the bright and dark splotch that surrounds it. The small craters around it appear to have glacier material within them, and the terrain here likely has a lot of near surface ice, being at 37 degrees north latitude in a region where the data suggests such ice exists. The different colors here likely indicate the difference between dust (orange) and coarser material (aqua).
The location, as shown in the overview map below, makes this mesa more tantalizing.
The orange dot halfway between the Phelgra and Erebus mountains marks this location, several hundred miles from several prime candidate landing spots for SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft. Images of the numbered sites can be found here.
Such domes in this region are not unusual. See for example this cool image from March 2023. As I noted then,
This is a flat plain interspersed with crater splats, mounds of a variety of sizes, and a puzzling meandering dark line that suggests a crack from which material is oozing.
None of the mounds in that image however had the linear features of today’s mound, which only makes the formation of this particular alien mound more perplexing.
The first Starship visitors to this region are going to have a lot of strange things to explore and study.
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 or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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
Salt dome? Boca is fine for development…Florida for a handful of NASA missions-but to truly make rocket travel routine…he needs a pad at a shipyard-like this: https://alabamashipyard.com Alabama has a surplus-give Gov. Kay Ivy a call.
Looks like a footprint on top of that mesa. The Hebrews constructed footprint shaped enclosures way back when :)
ed lomeli: Those darn Martians. If they can’t have a face then they are going to have a footprint instead!
These are volcanic domes, perhaps cryptodomes (subsurface intrusions that are exposed by erosion). I have published a couple of peer-reviewed papers on these features (e.g., https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0019103520304565?casa_token=fn_FD9oDmTwAAAAA:1xI0j0fQYZkg9gXeHXBKkdIIeq6WhXeo73lKNeYRDCsnQDc8mU47XxaKR41yK10XeXMBp2pKHQ).
Thank you Bill…. I’ve skimmed the paper, but need to Google a couple of terms before I can take it in! What I have gleaned on a first scan makes nothing but seny,!