Tag: exploration

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The cool image from Mars to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, provides us a good illustration of the lineated grooves that are typically seen on the surface of valley-confined glaciers, both on Earth and on Mars, and are also seen on the patched, grooved surface of Ganymede.

The picture was taken on March 13, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and shows what appears to be a glacier flowing through a constriction. The arrow indicates the direction of the downhill grade.

The location, indicated by the white dot inside the inset on the overview map above, marks the location, in the western end of the 2,000 long northern mid-latitude strip on Mars I dub glacier country. In these three mensae regions (Deuteronilus, Protonilus, and Nilosyrtis) of chaos terrain practically every high resolution image shows features that resemble glaciers.

In this case, the glacial flow appears to be draining from a 10-mile-wide ponded circular valley though a narrow gap.

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Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on March 18, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). I have also rotated it so that north is to the top.

Labeled a “terrain sample” by the camera team, this picture was likely taken not as part of any specific research project, but to fill a gap in the camera’s schedule so as to maintain its proper temperature. As usual, when the camera team needs to do this, they try to pick a target of interest. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes not.

In this case, the picture is of a location only about 800 miles from the Martian north pole, on the northern lowland plains. While the section shown to the right focuses on the largest crater, the full picture includes a few others, all of which appear to have their interior floors cracking in the same way, and all appear to be pedestal craters, sitting above the surrounding terrain, though by not as much.
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Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on February 16, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a pockmarked flat plain with a scattering of meandering hollows, each filled with ripple sand dunes that make these depressions resemble at first glance the tracks of tires.

Obviously, we are not looking at evidence of a past giant vehicle moving across the ground on Mars. The MRO science team labels these “fractures,” suggesting some past geological process caused the surface to crack in this manner, with those cracks widening with time due to erosion or sublimation.

The location of course tells us something about that process.
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Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on March 17, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The science team labeled this a terrain sample image, which implies it was taken not as part of any specific request, but to fill a gap in the camera’s schedule in order to maintain its proper temperature.

What are we looking at? This stippled terrain with curved ridges actually extends quite a distance beyond this image. A MRO context camera picture taken on July 22, 2020 shows its full extent, about 10 miles wide but extending to the north and south about 30 miles total, butting up against a north-south mountain chain to its east that is about seventy miles long with its highest peak about 8,000 feet above this plain.
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The nature of today’s cool image suggests both ancient and more recent geological activity, each coming from entirely different sources but both helping to shape the alien Martian surface.

The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on March 13, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the science team has labeled an “elongated depression,” sitting in the middle of a relatively flat but very rough stippled circular plain about 60 miles in diameter. An MRO context camera picture, taken on February 19, 2012, covered the central strip of this plain, and shows that its surface is equally rough and stippled everywhere, with only a few craters and one or two slight changes in elevation.

So, how does this feature tell us both about the ancient and recent geological history of this spot on Mars?
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Today’s cool image from Mars is not so much unique visually as it is unique in terms of its location. The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on January 31, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the northern rim of a small crater, with its floor filled with an intriguing mound of material.

The picture was labeled a “terrain sample”, which suggests it wasn’t taken as part of any specific research project by instead to fill a gap in the camera’s schedule. To maintain the camera’s proper temperature, it is necessary to take pictures regularly, and when the camera team finds a gap that is too long, they fill it by choosing some almost random target in that gap that might be interesting. Sometimes it is, sometimes not.

In this case I strongly suspect this target was hardly random. The picture title also mentions MRO’s now retired radar CRISM instrument, which was used to detect evidence of underground ice. My guess is that the camera team thus likely decided to image this crater in high resolution because that radar data suggested the presence of underground ice.

This guess is strongly confirmed by a context camera picture taken of this crater on September 1, 2008. The crater appears surrounded by the typical splash apron one routinely sees around impact craters in the mid- and high-latitude northern lowland plains, where there is a lot of near surface ice.

The bumpy mound seen in high resolution on the floor of this crater could very well be buried glacial ice, as it mimics similar features in the many craters in the mid-latitudes of Mars. But is it buried ice? The location says otherwise.
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