A pyramid on Mars

A pyramid on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on January 21, 2023 by the high resolution camera of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label a “pyramidal mound”, which is I think understating the point somewhat.

This pyramid is almost perfectly square, with two perpendicular ridgelines rising from its corners to meet perfectly at the pyramid’s peak. A similar pyramid mound in the Cydonia region, where the so-called “Face on Mars” was found, caused endless absurd speculations in the 1990s of past Martian civilizations, all of which burst into nothingness when good high resolution images were finally obtained in the 2000s.

But what caused this very symmetrical natural feature?
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Triple crater on Mars

Triple crater on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on January 22, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists have labeled simply as a “triple crater,” a very apt description.

What caused this? The most obvious explanation is the arrival almost simultaneously of three pieces. As this asteroid or comet entered the thin Martian atmosphere as a single object, that atmosphere was thick enough to break it into three parts but not enough to destroy it entirely. When it hit the ground, the top piece hit first, with the center and bottom pieces following in sequence, thus partly obscuring the previous hits.

The smaller surrounding craters could either be additional pieces from the bolide, or secondary impacts from ejecta thrown out at impact.
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Weird surface cracking in the Martian northern lowland plains

Weird surface cracks on Mars

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on January 15, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The picture was simply labeled “Channel-like feature”, which hardly describes this strange terrain.

Apparently a mantle of surface material has covered and filled an ancient east-west channel. That surface material however has since cracked along the edges of that channel as well along its length. The cracks suggest that the material in the channel is moving downhill slowly, cracking along the cliff walls while also being pulled apart to form the north-south cracks.

My regular readers will I think be able to guess what is going on here, but if you can’t, the overview map below will help explain this.
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Exploring the cratered southern highlands of Mars, part 4

Overview map

Gullies in Asimov Crater
Click for full image.

Today is the last part in our four part exploration of the cratered southern highlands of Mars, begun last week. (For the early parts, go here-Part #1, here-Part #2, and here-Part #3.) Though there is no need, new readers should read the first three parts first, in order to get the larger perspective of this final post.

The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on December 20, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the eastern main gully descending down into a pit that sits in the north center of 52-mile-wide Asimov Crater, as shown in the inset on the overview map above. (For an MRO high resolution of the western gullies into this pit, see this January 2019 cool image post.)
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Exploring the cratered southern highlands of Mars, part 3

Overview map

Pit and surface in crater
Click for original image.

This is the third part of this week’s series taking a look at some of the strange features in the southern cratered highlands of Mars. In the first part I posted a beautiful image of what appears to be a crater filled to the brim with glacial ice, surrounded by an ice sheet plain. In part two we took a look at the interior of Rabe Crater, which though very nearby does not appear to have obvious glacial features within it at all. What it has instead are deep open air pits and a lot of sand dunes.

Today’s image to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, takes us to the interior of an unnamed 45-mile-wide crater only about 70 miles north of Rabe. The black dot in the inset on overview map above indicates the photo’s location. The picture was taken on January 1, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Like Rabe, this crater also has many large open-air pits. In the picture one pit, near the lower center of the picture, is surrounded by soft-looking mounds and a strangely swirling textured and uneven terrain that makes up the majority of the crater’s floor.

This picture might help explain what we saw in Rabe. The textured terrain in this unnamed crater could easily be ice-impregnated and now hardened sand dunes. The pit could be where that impregnated ice has sublimated away, leaving behind the dust from those ancient dunes which then forms new sand dunes. In Rabe, the crater floor above its pits looks very similar to this swirling textured surface, suggesting the same process is going on there.

What strengthens this explanation is the many other craters nearby, all indicated by red dots in the overview map above, that also have pits or distorted crater floors. Their proximity suggests that there is an underground ice layer in this region, always at about the same elevation, and each crater impact exposed it. With time that exposed ice, no longer pure but filled with material from the impacts, sublimated partly away, producing the pits as well as ample sand to form sand dunes.

Exploring the cratered southern highlands of Mars, part 2

Overview map

Dune-bedrock contact in Rabe Crater
Click for original image.

Our travels in the cratered southern highlands of Mars continues. Today we visit 67-mile-wide Rabe Crater, as indicated on the overview map above. The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on January 27, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

Rabe Crater is significant for several reasons. First, it was one of the first places on Mars where sand dunes were identified, by one of the Viking orbiters in the late 1970s [pdf]. Second, the pits and sand in its interior, are unusual and puzzling. The inset on the overview map provides a closeup look at the crater. The yellow mound in the central south of the crater floor is all dunes, which are surrounded by the pit with steep cliffs more than a 1,000 feet high.
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Exploring the cratered southern highlands of Mars, part 1

Overview map of southern cratered highlands of Mars

Glacial filled crater
Click for original image.

Today and for the next three days the cool images that I will post from Mars will explore a region that I have not covered very much in depth, the cratered southern highlands between the giant basins Argyre and Hellas. The map above is an overview of this 7,000-mile-long region, all of which is inside the 30 to 60 degree south latitude band where scientists have found much evidence of buried glaciers. In this region the bulk of that evidence is most obvious inside craters.

The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on December 21, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and shows a typical example of the kind of glacial feature found. The white cross on the map marks its location, west of the Hellespontus Mountains that form the western rim of Hellas Basin.

Scientists have dubbed this feature concentric crater fill, a purposely vague term because — though it looks like glacial fill — until there is data to confirm it the scientists would quite properly rather not commit themselves. The concentric rings suggest multiple layers, each of which likely marks a different climate cycle in Mars’ geological history.

In this case the glacier features also appear to cover the entire plain surrounding the crater as well as its rim. The small crater to the west is similar, and both give the appearance that the ice sheet that covers them came after the impact, draping itself over everything, with the craters only visible because the ice sheet sags within their interiors.

More crazy features from the cratered highlands to come.

The outermost edge of Mars’ north polar icecap

The outermost edge of Mars' north polar icecap
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on February 4, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the terminating cliffs of the north pole ice cap of Mars, dubbed Rupes Tenius on this side of the icecap.

At this point the elevation difference of the icecap’s edge from top to bottom is not significant, only about 1,500 feet or so, though this is a very rough estimate. As with all other images of the ice cape’s edge, there are many many layers visible, all indicating a different cycle in the climate history of Mars as its rotational tilt swings from about 11 degrees to 60 degrees over eons.

Moreover, at this point there is likely not that much difference between the terrain on top and the terrain below. Both will be mixed ice and dust and coarse rocks, though the percentages will be shifting towards less ice as we go down.
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A journey into Martian chaos

Overview map of Aram Chaos

With today’s cool image, we shall begin with the overview map, and drill our way down until we get a close look at another example of truly alien Martian terrain, with only a hint of similarity to comparable geology on Earth.

The overview map to the right shows us Aram Chaos, an ancient 170-mile-wide impact crater that has gone through such complex geology that it is difficult, maybe impossible, to unravel it based on data obtained from orbit. As I wrote in a detailed December 2020 post describing the confusing geology of this crater,

The floor of Aram Chaos is a place of great puzzlement to planetary geologists. The geology there is incredibly complex, and includes chaos terrain overlain by several sedimentary layers of sulfate minerals. The chaos terrain is most obvious in the southern part of the crater’s floor. The flat areas near the eastern center are those overlaying sedimentary layers.

When we zoom into the white box we can see a good example of this complexity.
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Ingenuity completes 49th flight on Mars

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

The Ingenuity team today posted the official flight totals for the Mars helicopter’s 49th flight, which took place yesterday.

The helicopter flew 925 feet for 143 seconds, or two minutes and twenty-three seconds. The plan had been to fly 894 feet for 135 seconds, but has been happening consistently for the past dozen or so flights, the helicopter spent a little more time in the air and traveled a little farther.

As for altitude, it apparently did exactly as planned, averaging about 40 feet in height until the end of the mission, when Ingenuity went straight up another twelve feet to get a wider view of its landing area.

The map to the right shows the context. The green dot marks Ingenuity’s location at the start of the flight. The green line indicates my approximate estimate of its flight path and landing area, which the engineering team has not yet posted. The white dots and line mark Perseverance’s path, with its present location at the area dubbed Tenby where it has obtained its first core sample from the top of the delta.

Update on MOXIE’s two years on Mars, producing oxygen

Link here. MOXIE is a technology test instrument on the rover Perseverance that has proven it will be possible to practically produce sufficient oxygen from the Martian atmosphere to sustain a human colony.

The link provides a nice summary of everything the engineering team has accomplished since Perseverance landed in testing this technology. As I wrote in my December post about MOXIE’s achievements:

Based on these tests, MOXIE has unequivocally proven that future human explorers will not need to bring much oxygen with them, and will in fact have essentially an unlimited supply, on hand from the red planet itself. More important, MOXIE has also proven that the technology to obtain this oxygen already exists.

All we need to do is plant enough MOXIE trees on Mars.

Sponge terrain on Mars

Sponge terrain 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 January 11, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissnace Orbiter (MRO).

The scientists labeled this picture “Rocky Terrain.” Though this describes the overall sense of the full image, it fails to capture correctly the nature of this patch of ground at the center of the picture. As you can see, this patch of spongelike surface starts and ends abruptly. It appears that it is a layer on top of the surrounding terrain that has also been eroded aggressively since its placement.

The many craters on its surface seem to have come later, though as the crater size diminishes it becomes harder to separate the craters from the sponge holes. Moreover, some of the larger craters are distorted in shape, as if the impact hit material that was viscous and could flow somewhat.

The overview map below gives some context, but only some.
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A bubbly cauldron on the surface of Mars

A bubbly cauldron on the surface of Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on December 20, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a strange terrain of craters and mounds, with all the mounds having pits within them like volcanic calderas. In between the surface has a two-toned stippled look, as if two different materials are in the process of mixing.

My immediate impression was that of the bubbly surface of a vat of tomato sauce simmering. Or maybe the vile mixture created by the witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, which as they mix they chant:

First witch:
Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelter’d venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.

ALL:
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

Of course, this is not a vat of witch’s brew or tomato sauce. It is the surface of the planet Mars, but an alien surface nonetheless.
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Zhurong: Small polygons on light curved dunes indicate regular atmospheric water interaction

Zhurong's full journey on Mars

A paper published this week in Geophysical Research Letters by the science team for China Zhurong Martian rover has revealed the discovery of small polygon cracks on the surface of the many curved light-colored small dunes found in the region where Zhurong landed, suggesting the possibility of relatively recent water activity between the atmosphere and the dune surfaces.

Those dunes, dubbed transverse aeolian ridges (TARs) by the science team, are the many light curves visible in the labeled Mars Reconnaissance mosaic to the right. The blue arrows indicate Zhurong’s path south from its landing spot at the top and ending near the bottom of the picture after traveling about 1,400 feet.

According to the paper, the TARs were formed by the prevailing winds over many eons, coming first from the north and then from the northwest. The edges of the ridges, being smaller, are pushed ahead quicker, thus creating the curved shape. The polygons were small, never larger than 4 inches in size, with five to six sides. The scientists theorize that they were formed when atmospheric water interacted with the dune crust, causing fractures “due to temperature/moisture changes or deliquescence/dehydration cycling of salts”. This process could be slow or fast, and could actually be occurring in relatively recent times, as the scientists say it requires only a little water in the atmosphere.

More likely however we are seeing evidence of water from the past, from tens of thousands to several million years ago.

Zhurong meanwhile remains in hibernation, and might never come out of that condition. Orbital images indicate that its solar panels are dust-covered, the result of the heavy winter dust storm season. The project team however is hopeful that with time and the arrival of Martian summer the dust will be blown off and they can reactivate the rover. This hope however entirely depends on the arrival of a dust devil acoss the top of Zhurong, a random event that cannot be predicted. With both the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, such events happened regularly, allowing those missions to last years instead of only 90 days. With InSight it never happened, and the lander died after two-plus years on Mars.

Zhurong’s future fate thus remains unknown, but not promising at this moment.

Looking back from the foothills of Mount Sharp

Panorama looking back across Gale Crater, March 29, 2023
Click for original image.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

The panorama above, cropped to post here, was taken today by the left navigation camera on the Mars rover Curiosity. It looks back at the rover’s previous travels, though only the terrain traveled in the past few months is visible, the rover having reached this point through the notch to the left of the distinctly dark mesa in the center of the picture. The lower flanks of Mount Sharp the rover traversed to get here are now blocked from view.

Instead, the image provides a spectacular example of the views north from Curiosity’s present position. The overview map to the right provides us the full context of the entire ten-plus year journey since Curiosity landed safely on Mars on August 5, 2012. The white squiggly line indicates the rover’s route. The yellow lines mark the approximate area covered by the panorama. The rim of Gale Crater is about 20-25 miles away.

As you can see, as spectacular as this view is, the journey up Mount Sharp has barely begun. Mount Sharp’s peak is about 18,000 feet high. The rover at this point has only climbed about 4,600 feet from the floor of Gale Crater.

Mars’ largest mountain region

Mars' largest mountain region
Click for original image.

The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on September 21, 2015 by the context camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). I originally was going to post a high resolution image of some of these mountains, taken on January 1, 2023 that showed some slope streaks, but quickly realized that a wider view of this mountain region was a much more interesting story.

This picture covers an area about 50 by 50 miles. As you can see, it is endless series of random hills ridges and peaks, with only a vague hint of a northeast to southwest alignment. Ground travel through this region would be slow and twisty, immediately reminding me of my many trips to West Virginia, where the hills and valleys are almost as random and never ending.

The overview map below however suggests the scale of this region exceeds West Virginia many times over.
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A Martian crater with a surface pattern that resembles hanging draperies

A Martian crater with a surface pattern like hanging draperies

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on January 27, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and shows what the scientists label a “streak-spoke pattern” inside the crater. To my eye, the pattern more resembles hanging draperies, neatly tied near the top and then pulled apart as they descend to the ground.

This photo was a follow-up to a previous picture by MRO on February 4, 2008, more than seven Martian years ago, to see if there had been any identifiable changes in that time. Both images were taken in springtime, and despite the passage of time, the 2023 image shows no obvious changes from the 2008 photo.

What caused this distinct pattern? The first guess would be the wind, except if so shouldn’t there have been some change over seven Martian years?
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Curiosity heads to the west of the Hill of Pillows

Panorama on March 27, 2023 (Sol 3781)
Click for full resolution panorama. The original images can be found here, here, here, here, and here.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

In my previous post on March 11, 2023 showing Curiosity’s spectacular view at that time in the foothills of Mount Sharp, the main question was: Which route will the rover take in the next few weeks? Based on the panorama above, created from five pictures taken by Curiosity’s right navigation camera today, it now appears that the science team has made its decision and will have the rover traverse to the west of what I label the Hill of Pillows.

The overview map to the right gives the context. The blue dot marks Curiosity’s position three days ago, with the yellow lines indicating the approximate area covered by the panorama. The red dotted line shows the planned route going past the Hill of Pillows to the east.

The science team took a careful look at the terrain in both directions, and decided the route to the west was both more gradual and less rough. This set of images by the navigation camera was now taken to better plan the route up in this hollow among its rock-strewn ground.

Make sure you look at the full resolution version of the panorama. You can see on the horizon the high mesas in the south just beginning to appear.

Ancient Martian landslides

Ancient Martian landslides
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on December 23, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The image was labeled “Landslides in Orson Welles Crater” because the full photo shows at least two large and obvious slides, with the biggest shown to the right.

These avalanches are likely ancient because both have craters on them suggesting the material has not moved for a very long time. Yet when both flowed they did so almost like mud, the material moving downhill almost in a single blobby mass. Both have this look, as do many Martian landslides, which I think is why the scientists usually label them mass wasting events.
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Where the flood lava of two gigantic Martian volcanoes meet

Where the flood lava of two gigantic Martian volcanoes meet
Click for original image.

Today’s cool image illustrates once again the importance of looking not simply at the picture but at the surrounding larger context in order to understand the Martian features within the photograph.

The photo to the left, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on January 31, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The location is at 26 north latitude, so it is in the dry equatorial regions. It shows what appears to be a large Martian flood lava plain, with at least two different flood lava events appearing to flow to the northeast, with the second only partly covering the first.

From this high resolution image it seemed probable that the source of the flow was from the southwest, an assumption that at first glance is strengthened by the overview map below.
» Read more

Ingenuity completes 48th flight on Mars

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

On March 21, 2023 the Mars helicopter Ingenuity successfully completed its 48th flight on Mars, flying 1,305 feet for 149.9 seconds with a top altitude of 39 feet. As has now become routine on all the recent flights, the distance and time in the air exceeded slightly the planned amounts, probably because Ingenuity needed slightly more time to find a good landing spot.

The link provides a very short movie created from images looking down during the flight.

The map to the right provides the context. The green dot and line indicates Ingenuity’s new position and flight path respectively. The blue dot marks Perseverance’s present location, a spot the mission planners had previously targeted as a prime place for obtaining core samples. The red dotted line shows the rover’s planned route.

Since the science team is now using Ingenuity for scouting purposes, its turn towards the rim of Belva Crater suggests they are considering this detour for Perseverance as well.

Confused glaciers in a Martian crater

Confused glaciers in a Martian crater
Click for original image.

Cool image time. The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on February 2, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and shows a strangely blobby crater in the northern mid-latitudes where glacial features are frequently found inside craters.

In this case however the glacier seems very confused. As this is in the northern hemisphere, you would expect glacial material to survive on the north-facing southern interior slopes of the crater, where there is year-round less sunlight. The mottled eroded terrain in the south part of the crater floor suggests this. However, the crater also clearly has a terraced glacier on its south-facing northern interior slopes.

Why has the glacial material survived in both places, but not in the center of the crater?

In addition, there is that strange roughly circular feature attached to the south side of the crater. What formed it? Is it a glacier on the plains surrounding the crater? Or are we looking at volcanic material?

This crater is also unique. The crater just to its southwest (partly seen in the cropped image above), is a much more typical glacial-filled mid-latitude crater, its interior material more evenly distributed and its circular rim only slightly distorted.
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A half-mile high Martian cliff on the verge of collapse

A half-mile Martian cliff on the verge of collapse
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on December 24, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows erosion gullies coming down off a mountain side, just north of a massive cliff that I estimate to be around 2,000 to 3,000 feet high.

Note the north-south-trending cracks. These suggest that this entire half-mile-high cliff face is slumping downward, cracking as it does so. The cracks at the start of the high flat-topped thumb-shaped mesa near the image bottom are especially intriguing. They suggest that this entire mesa might eventually separate and give way.

There is a specific reason this cliff face is slumping, as shown in the overview map below.
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A verde valley on Mars

A verde valley on Mars
Click for original image.

In the southwest where I live, a valley dubbed “verde” (which means “green” in Spanish) is generally a place with a somewhat persistent river with lots of lush plant life. The Verde Valley in Arizona is the perfect example, with “close to 80% of the valley’s land … national forest.”

On Mars there is also a verde valley, but the name is not descriptive in the least. The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on January 22, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and shows one section of the Martian Verde Vallis, draining south to north.

The dark rippled patches inside this shallow canyon are sand dunes. In fact, though MRO has not taken many high resolution images of Verde Vallis, every one shows the valley with further patches of ripple dunes. See for example this image of a section of the valley just a bit farther north.
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The ubiquitous presence of ice in the Martian mid-latitudes

Ice in the Martian mid-latitudes
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, rotated, and sharpened to post here, was taken on November 28, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Labeled merely as a “crater with mesa”, it gives us another example of the presence of glacial ice in the mid-latitudes of Mars.

That mesa is what planetary scientists have labeled “concentric crater fill,” a glacial feature found in numerous craters throughout the mid-latitude bands from 30 to 60 degrees latitude. The ground in the terrain surrounding the crater could be also be impregnated with ice, but based on the location as shown in the overview map below, it is just as likely to be lava.

In fact, the location of this particular crater illustrates why concentric crater fill might become the best source of ice for future colonists.
» Read more

Endless ripple dunes in Mars’ third largest impact basin

Ripple dunes in Mars' third biggest impact basin
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on November 30, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The section cropped shows only a small portion of the endless ripple dunes seen in this area. The color strip provides us some interesting other details as well as mysteries. The orange indicates dust on the ridges as well as the higher terrain near the center of the picture. The green in the hollows as well as to the east and west suggests coarser materials that have settled in lower elevations. This supposition is reinforced by the orange area near the bottom of the picture where the ripples have mostly dissipated. This is a high spot, and we appear to be looking at a dusty surface. (This impression is clearer in the full image.)

The latitude is high, 48 degrees south, but as far as I know orbital images have not found a lot of ice evidence in this part of Mars.
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Reassessed fuel measurements give Mars Odyssey until 2025 before it runs out

Using more refined methods for measuring the fuel left on Mars Odyssey, the oldest orbiter circling Mars at this time, engineers have determined that it will not run out until 2025, not this year as previously thought.

Mars Odyssey has been in orbit around Mars since 2001. The fuel is used by thrusters to help maintain the spacecraft’s orientation, which is mostly done by reaction wheels, or gyroscopes. We should therefore not be surprised if by 2025 engineers figure out a way to get the reaction wheels to do the whole job, when the fuel runs out.

Geological evidence of past glacier found in Mars’ dry equatorial regions

Overview map

Scientists have uncovered geological evidence of a past glacier in westernmost end of the giant Martian canyon Valles Marineris, right at the point where it transitions into the complex chaos region dubbed Noctis Labyrinthus. The white dot on the map to the right indicates the location.

The surface feature identified as a “relict glacier” is one of many light-toned deposits (LTDs) found in the region. Typically, LTDs consist mainly of light-colored sulfate salts, but this deposit also shows many of the features of a glacier, including crevasse fields and moraine bands. The glacier is estimated to be 6 kilometers long and up to 4 kilometers wide, with a surface elevation ranging from +1.3 to +1.7 kilometers. This discovery suggests that Mars’ recent history may have been more watery than previously thought, which could have implications for understanding the planet’s habitability.

What we’ve found is not ice, but a salt deposit with the detailed morphologic features of a glacier. What we think happened here is that salt formed on top of a glacier while preserving the shape of the ice below, down to details like crevasse fields and moraine bands,” said Dr. Pascal Lee, a planetary scientist with the SETI Institute and the Mars Institute, and the lead author of the study. [emphasis mine]

You can read the paper here [pdf]. The research specifically suggests that near surface water ice in the dry equatorial regions of Mars could have been there much more recently that previously believed. It also suggests, by the rarity of this discovery, that there is likely almost no near surface ice in the equatorial regions, at present.

Perseverance captures a movie of Ingenuity’s 47th flight on Mars

Ingenuity shortly after take-off on its 47th flight
Click for full movie.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

During Ingenuity’s 47th flight on Mars on March 9, 2023, one of Perseverance’s high resolution camera’s took rapid-fire images of the helicopter’s take-off and initial flight, from which the science team created a movie.

The overview map to the right provides the context for that movie at the link. The blue dot marks Perserverance’s location, with the yellow lines indicating the approximate area seen in the movie. The smaller green dot and line indicates Ingenuity’s take-off point and part of its flight seen in the movie, with the larger green dot its landing spot. From the press release:

This video shows the dust initially kicked up by the helicopter’s spinning rotors, as well as Ingenuity taking off, hovering, and beginning its 1,444-foot (440-meter) journey to the southwest.

At take-off Ingenuity was 394 feet away from Perseverance.

A Martian crater, ice, and dust devil tracks

A Martian crater, ice, and dust devil tracks
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on January 2, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It is once again a terrain sample image, taken not for any specific research but to fill a gap in the schedule so as to maintain the camera’s proper temperature.

What this picture shows is that even though Mars has a thin atmosphere that produces dust devils, the propagation of dust devils is not uniform across the red planet’s surface. In this picture there are a lot of devil tracks, going in many different directions. Yet few of the many cool images I post from MRO show this number of tracks. In many cases the ground might not be agreeable to leaving tracks, but that cannot be the entire explanation.
» Read more

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