Tag: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

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Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on October 25, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The science team labels this a “layered feature,” which is appropriately vague in order to not prematurely push a conclusion that is not yet proven. Extensive orbital imagery and data however strongly suggests the layers inside this crater are glacial in nature, each layer laid down during Mars’ many thousands of climate cycles as the planet’s rotational tilt swung back and forth from 11 degrees to 60 degrees. According to the most popular theory today, when that tilt was high, the mid-latitudes (where this 3,000-foot-wide unnamed crater is located) were actually colder than the planet’s poles. The water ice at the icecaps would then migrate from the poles to the mid-latitudes, causing the glaciers to grow.

When the tilt was low the process would reverse, with the mid-latitudes now warmer than the poles, causing the glaciers to shrink. The wedding cake nature of these layers is likely because, over time, Mars has steadily lost its total budget of water to space, so with each cycle the glacier could not grow as much.

Though many such glacial-filled craters have been found in the mid-latitudes, reinforcing these theories, the location of this crater is even more interesting.
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Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on October 31, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The science team labels this “Impact Ejecta with Marginal Pits,” though even on the full image I am not sure what the impact ejecta is. The pits themselves appear to have formed when near-surface ice sublimated away during the summer months. The location is at 59 degrees north latitude, deep within the Martian northern lowland plains. Since orbital data suggests much of those plains at this latitude has an ice table of some thickness near the surface, it is very reasonable to assume these pits formed when summer sunlight heated that ice, turning it to gas which eventually pushed out to form the pits.

But what about the impact ejecta? Where is it? And where is the crater from that impact?
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Glacier country in the northern mid-latitudes of Mars

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on November 4, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The science team labels the features in the lowland below the mesas “ribbed terrain.” To me it looks like peeling paint. What it is however is glacial material, a lot of it. The white dot on the overview map above marks the location, in the middle of the 2,000-mile-long mid-latitude strip in the northern hemisphere I label glacier country, because practically every high resolution image of this region shows glacial features like those on the right.

The mesa with the crater on top gives a clue on the geological history. This is chaos terrain, a region of random mesas cross-crossed with canyons and wide low plains, as shown in the inset. The entire surface was probably once at the same height as the top of that mesa with the crater. Over time glacial ice eroded away along fault lines. As that sublimation process continued, the fault lines widened to became canyons, then the flat plains, with the isolated mesas remaining between.

The “peeling paint” terrain is likely a layer of ice that is in the process of sublimating away.

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Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on September 26, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

I picked this image out of the MRO archive because of the many dust devil tracts that cut across the entire image, traveling in all directions with no apparent pattern. I also picked it because those tracks also cut across the many parallel small ridges that appear to be ancient ripple dunes that have since hardened into rock. What makes this landscape puzzling is how those dust devil tracks leave no evidence on those ridges. It is as if the ancient ripple dunes were laid down after the very recent dust devil tracks, even though that is chronologically entirely backwards.

Apparently, the dust devil tracks form because the devil only disturbs the dust that coats the flat low ground between the ridges. The ridges themselves are hard, and thus the devils, produced in Mars’ extremely thin atmosphere, can leave no mark.
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Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 8, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The picture’s research focus is the gullies, which the scientists’ describe as “perched pole-facing gullies on ancient crater wall.” Perched means the start and end of each gully is on that crater wall, linked neither to the top or bottom of the wall itself. That the gully starts below the top means whatever caused it came from within the wall itself, not from the plateau above. That it ends before the crater floor means the process that cut the gully out was not powerful enough to reach the bottom.

That the gullies are on the interior north wall of this unnamed 25-mile-wide crater means they get less sunlight year round, something that must play a part in causing the gullies.
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Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 4, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It is labeled as a “terrain sample,” so it likely was taken not as part of any specific research project but to fill a gap in the schedule in order to maintain the camera’s proper temperature.

The picture shows a flat rippled plain with a handful of very small thin ridges, oriented 90 degrees from the smaller ripples and sticking up a few feet above them.

The rough surface of the small ripples suggest these are dunes of sand that have hardened into rock. The thin larger ridges suggest an underlying topography buried by the sand. The dunes however might not be dunes at all, as indicated by their location.
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Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on September 1, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label “a fracture with clays.”

This canyon is about a mile and a half wide, with the floor ranging from 800 to 1,100 feet to the rim. It was not formed initially by any ice or water flow, but by a spreading of the crust, forcing cracks to form that might have later been modified by wind, ice, or water. The presence of clays in this canyon strengthens that later ice/water modification, as clays require water to form.

The streaks on the northern wall are slope streaks, an unexplained phenomenon unique to Mars. While at first glance they look like avalanches, they have no debris piles at their base, and do nothing to change the topography. In fact, streaks can sometimes go uphill for short distances, following the surface. They happen randomly throughout the year, and fade with time.

It is believed their cause is related to dust avalanches, but this is only one of a number of theories that attempt to explain them. None is entirely satisfactory.
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Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on October 25, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Labeled merely as a “terrain sample,” it 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 the camera’s proper temperature.

The terrain is definitely blobby, with some hollows appears to have ripple dunes suggesting dust and sand. The rounded mounds and some hollows however suggest instead near surface ice or places where sublimation of that underground ice caused the hollows.

Some of the circular depressions might suggest impact craters, but if so, those craters have been significantly modified and softened since impact. Some do appear to be filled with glacial debris.
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Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on October 2, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The scientists label this “enigmatic terrain” because its origins are a bit difficult to decipher. The location is just north of the equator, so this is in the dry tropics of Mars, where no near-surface ice is found at all. The location is also in the middle of Elysium Planitia, one of the largest flood lava plains on Mars. Elysium is a largely featureless flat plain, where flood lava from the large giant Martian volcanoes covered a vast region.

Here however that top layer of flood lava appears almost like peeling paint that failed to stick to the underlying rougher terrain. In many places it is gone, exposing a stippled surface that is also likely flood lava but laid down either in a rougher manner or eroded over time to leave a rougher surface.
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Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on October 9, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The scientists label this “Channel in North Warrego Valles,” referring to the meandering channel on the left side of the picture. Note the stippled look of the surrounding terrain. This surface appears to be brain terrain, an as-yet unexplained feature on Mars that is always associated with near-surface ice features.

This location is at 40 degrees south latitude, placing it in the mid-latitudes where lots of glacial features are often found on Mars. Thus, it shouldn’t be surprising to find at this location brain terrain, or a meandering channel. The location however is a bit unusual, and reinforces once again that there is a lot of near-surface on Mars, readily available, as long as you are above 30 degrees latitude north or south.
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