Tag: Mars

When looking at Mars’ images you must never jump to conclusions

1:16 pm

Hardened sand in a crater
Click for full image.

In the past four years I have posted hundreds of cool images taken by the orbiters circling Mars. From those images I have been able to slowly gather and pass on to my readers some of the solid knowledge that scientists are gaining now about the Red Planet.

The image to the right illustrates best why one must never make any quick assumptions about the features you see in these photos. Taken on November 28, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), it shows a small crater that appears partly filled with material. On its walls can be seen many slope streaks, a still unexplained feature unique to Mars that is not caused by rock or debris avalanches.

As for the material inside the crater, based on the majority of Martian images showing similar craters, the first assumption one might make is that this material is some form of eroding glacial material.

That first assumption however would simply be wrong. Glacial material found in Martian craters is routinely found in the mid-latitude bands between 30 and 60 degrees. This crater is sits almost exactly on the equator of Mars, where scientists have found no evidence of any glacial material or near-surface ice. In the equatorial regions the surface of Mars is essentially dry.

So what is that patch of material? As always, location is all.
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Glaciers in the Phlegra Mountains on Mars

1:42 pm

Glaciers in the Phlegra mountains
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped to post here, is just one of the many hundreds taken by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) as well as Europe’s Mars Express orbiter showing the thick icy glacial flows that surround practically every mountain or hill in the Phlegra mountains of Mars.

This picture was taken on November 3, 2021, and shows the eroding foot of an eroding glacial flow coming down from a small hill in a southeastern part of these mountains dubbed Phlegra Dorsa. The downward grade is to the north.

At 30 degrees north latitude it is not surprising these glacial flows are eroding, as they are at the southernmost limit of the mid-latitudes bands where such glaciers are found. Closer to the equator scientists have yet to find much evidence of ice.

The repeating arcs at the foot of this glacier suggest that it pushed downward in cycles, with each later cycle traveling a shorter distance. This supposition makes sense, considering scientists think the ebb and flow of these Martian glaciers has been determined by the cyclical changes in the planet’s rotational tilt.

The overview map below not only gives the context, it shows this location relative to the candidate landing sites for SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft.
» Read more

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Scientists: Liquid surface water might have existed on Mars as recently as 2.3 billion years ago

10:00 am

Map showing locations of salt deposits
Click for full image.

Using orbital data from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), scientists have found salt deposits on Mars where nearby crater counts suggest that the salt water that once held these deposits could have evaporated away as recently as 2.3 billion years ago.

Using [MRO’s] cameras to create digital elevation maps, Leask and Ehlmann found that many of the salts were in depressions – once home to shallow ponds – on gently sloping volcanic plains. The scientists also found winding, dry channels nearby – former streams that once fed surface runoff (from the occasional melting of ice or permafrost) into these ponds. Crater counting and evidence of salts on top of volcanic terrain allowed them to date the deposits.

Past data has suggested that if liquid surface water had existed on Mars, it was gone by three billion years ago.

You can read the scientists’ research paper here.. The maps to the right, figure two from the paper, shows the locations of discovered salt deposits, almost all of which are in the Martian southern cratered highlands of Mars.

Is there uncertainty in these results? My regular readers know that the answer is of course yes. The biggest problem for these Mars researchers is that, despite the surface evidence that liquid water should have once flowed on the surface of Mars, no scientist has yet come up with a satisfactory model of Mars’ past climate that would have made that possible. The planet was either too cold or had too thin an atmosphere, based on other data. And getting it warmer or with a thicker atmosphere involves inventing any number of scenarios that are all questionable, based on what is presently known.

There is also the increasing evidence that glaciers of ice, not water, might have carved those winding, dry channels. If so, many of the assumptions that liquid water existed might simply be wrong, or incomplete. The scientists who wrote this report recognize this importance of ice on Mars, and note in their abstract that

…we think that the water source came from surface runoff, rather than deep groundwater welling up to the surface. The small amounts of water required are most likely from occasional melting of ice.

As always, more data is needed, with the most useful data that will clarify these conclusions being that gathered by future colonists on the surface of Mars itself.

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Mars’ youngest lava flow

1:41 pm

Mars' youngest lava flow
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image is in some ways another version of my last cool image yesterday. Both are in Mars’s volcano country. Both show what appears to be a lava flow.

Yesterday’s image showed the leftover evidence of a confined flow of lava running in a meandering pattern like a river, and was somewhat distant from the biggest nearby volcanoes. Today’s cool image, to the right and rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, is instead located smack dab on the inside of what is thought to be Mars’ youngest major lava event, the Athabasca flood lava plain, and in fact is near its outlet, when about 600 million years ago it belched out enough lava in just a matter of a few weeks to cover an area about the size of Great Britain.

The overview map below illustrates this.

» Read more

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U-shaped meandering Martian ridge

1:09 pm

Broad U-Shaped meandering ridge on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on December 3, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label a “Broad U-Shaped Ridge”. The two black squares are merely areas where no data was gathered.

Is this a fossilized river, of which scientists have identified more than 10,000 in the Arabia Terra transition region between the northern lowland plains and the southern cratered highlands? Arabia Terra however is literally on the other side of Mars, very far away.

The location, as shown in the overview map below, instead suggests that, if this U-shaped meander is a fossilized river, it isn’t one created by water or ice.
» Read more

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Another study says Mars does not have liquid water under its south pole

11:59 am

The uncertainty of science: A new study now claims that the presumed detection of lakes of liquid water under the Martian southern polar ice cap in 2018 was likely wrong, and that the detection was more likely volcanic rock.

The researchers think their conclusion — volcanic rock buried under ice — is a more plausible explanation for the 2018 discovery, which was already in question after scientists calculated the unlikely conditions needed to keep water in a liquid state at Mars’ cold, arid south pole.

“For water to be sustained this close to the surface, you need both a very salty environment and a strong, locally generated heat source, but that doesn’t match what we know of this region,” says the study’s lead author, Cyril Grima, a planetary scientist at The University of Texas at Austin Jackson School of Geosciences.

So my readers know how uncertain all of this is, note that the 2018 discovery of underwater liquid water was later confirmed by other scientists in 2020, then rejected by different researchers in 2021, who claimed it was clay instead.

In other words, the scientists have some inconclusive data that could mean many different things, either water, clay, volcanic rock, or maybe something else that someone hasn’t yet suggested. To really answer the question will require far more data, with some like required in situ on Mars itself.

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Confirmed: All debris cleared from Perseverance sample tube

8:40 am

Mosaic showing the clearing of debris
Click here and here for original images.

The Perseverance science team today announced in an update that their effort to clear the sample tube of bits of core sample has succeeded, as indicated partly by the two images above that I posted on January 19th.

According to the report, the two small pieces visible bottom center fell out after two small rotations of the carousal. Other pieces however remained, and these were removed as followed:

On Monday, Jan. 17, the team commanded another operation of the rotary percussive drill in an attempt to dislodge more material from the tube. With the tube’s open end still pointed towards the surface, we essentially shook the heck out of it for 208 seconds – by means of the percussive function on the drill. Mastcam-Z imagery taken after the event shows that multiple pieces of sample were dumped onto the surface. Is Tube 261 clear of rock sample? We have new Mastcam-Z images looking down the drill bit into the sample container that indicate little if any debris from the cored-rock sample remains. The sample tube has been cleared for reuse by the project.

The team is now discussing their next step, which could be drilling a new hole at this spot or moving on.

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Contact restored with InSight after dust storm

10:19 am

The InSight science team has regained communications with the lander on Mars following a dust storm that caused it to shut down all operations entirely.

Though the tweet from the science team says the space craft is out of safe mode, that really doesn’t appear to be the case. Safe mode is a condition where a robot ceases all science operations, hunkers down, and awaits further orders. All that has happened here is that the engineers have regained contact after communications were lost on January 7th. No science is being done.

The resumption of communications is excellent news, however. They must now access how much power the lander’s solar panels are generating to see if they can turn InSight’s main instrument, its seismometer, back on. Those panels might be badly covered with dust, preventing operations.

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Freaky badlands on Mars

1:20 pm

Freaky badlands on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated and cropped to post here, was taken on November 18, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Labeled merely as “Danielson Crater Outcrops,” it shows us a perfect example of the strangeness and sometimes very forbidding terrain of Mars.

We are looking at the outcrop tops of many tilted layers, worn into curves semicircles with the convex side all pointing to the southwest. In the hollowed concave-side, dust and sand have accumulated and been trapped, sometimes forming small ripple dunes when there is enough space for the wind to get inside, as seen in the picture’s lower right.

Danielson Crater is 41 miles in diameter. The overview map below provides the context.
» Read more

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Ingenuity’s 19th flight delayed due to Martian weather

9:10 am

Because of the early arrival of the fall dust storm season, the Ingenuity engineering team decided to delay the helicopter’s 19th flight on January 5th, rescheduling it to no earlier than January 23rd.

In the days following the flight delay, the dust storm moved over Jezero crater, and we were able to clearly see its effects in both MEDA data and from orbit (Figure 1). Most notable was a sharp drop in air density – about a 7% deviation below what was observed pre-dust storm. This observed decrease would have put density below the lower threshold of safe flight and would have imparted undue risk to the spacecraft. We also observed the effect of dust in the amount of sunlight absorbed by Ingenuity’s solar array, which fell well below normal “clear sky” levels, a drop of about 18%.

Apparently the storm has now dissipated, allowing the new flight date.

Though this flight postponement occurred two weeks ago, today’s update appears to be the first public announcement, which has been typical of the Ingenuity team. They generally announce planned flights just before take-off, but then provide no detailed update on what happened, sometimes for weeks.

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Debris apparently cleared from Perseverance’s sample carousel

10:12 am

Mosaic showing the clearing of debris
Click here and here for original images.

Two images taken by one of Perseverance’s cameras and downloaded today appear to show that the bits of debris from the rover’s most recent core sample that had fallen into the sample storage carousel have been dislodged and are now gone.

Those images are above, placed side by side. They were taken a little over an hour apart on January 18, 2022, probably before and after the rover completed two short rotations of the carousel, as planned.

The first image on the left, taken at 12:12:47 local solar time, shows the two small pieces sitting near the bottom inside of the sample storage holder. The second image on the right, taken at 13:20:40 local solar time, shows both pieces gone. There also appears to be less small rubble on the small platform just below this point.

The science team will next take pictures of the ground below, comparing those with pictures taken before the rotations, to see if they can spot this debris and confirm it is completely clear of the rover.

If the debris is gone, as these images suggest, Perseverance will be able to drill another core sample at this location and store it as planned. Expect an announcement by tomorrow or the next day providing more details of this success.

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The plan for clearing Perseverance’s sample carousel of debris

9:22 am

Debris in core sample carousel on Perseverance
Click for full image.

The Perseverance science team yesterday outlined the first steps in their plan to remove pieces of debris that had fallen into the core sample bit storage carousel, as shown by the picture to the right, and thus prevents them from storing further core samples.

First they have taken pictures of an area of the ground below the rover to establish a baseline. Then,

With this below-chassis, preliminary imaging, in hand, the team [will return] the remaining contents of Sample Tube 261 (our latest cored-rock sample) back to its planet of origin. Although this scenario was never designed or planned for prior to launch, it turns out dumping a core from an open tube is a fairly straightforward process (at least during Earth testing). We sent commands up yesterday, and later on today the rover’s robotic arm will simply point the open end of the sample tube toward the surface of Mars and let gravity do the rest.

This maneuver will tell them exactly how much material broke off the core when some pieces of it dropped into the carousel.

Next, on January 18th, they will have the bit carousel perform two short rotations, the first short and the second longer, to shift the debris in the carousel and get more information about it. Some might drop out with this maneuver, so they are also going to take more ground pictures to see if any did.

They have not yet outlined the next steps in this removal procedure, though they have said the need for this procedure was anticipated when the rover was designed. Thus they must know what those steps will be, but are likely holding off outlining them because they might need to revise their actions depending on what they learn in the next few days.

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A cracking and collapsing glacier on Mars

12:18 pm

Fractured ice sink hole on Mars?
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on November 4, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a small portion of the floor of a very ancient and eroded unnamed 40-mile-wide crater on Mars.

MRO’s science team labeled this picture simply as a “Fractured Feature.” The section I have focused on in the cropped image is clearly the fractures the scientists were interested in. What is heck caused this?

The location is at 39 degrees north latitude and is located at the very western end and in the center of the 2,000-mile-long mid-latitude strip I call glacier country because practically every photo exhibits evidence of glaciers. Thus, this fractured terrain is almost certainly evidence of ice that partly buried and thus protected from sublimating away.

The collapse feature indicates more, however. The circular shape of the fractures suggests that the center of this feature is sinking, with the ice on all sides slipping downward and breaking as it does so. The location however is not in the center of this crater, but near its southern interior rim. Moreover, in a wider image from MRO’s context camera this feature appears to be within what looks like a thick patch of ice filling most of the southeast quadrant of the crater. On it are other similar collapse features.

The data suggests that this ice patch is eroding, but doing so influenced by the rough terrain on which it sits. The sinks suggest the glacial ice is sublimating first over low spots, but this is hardly certain.

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Curiosity’s wheels holding up despite very mountainous and rocky terrain

12:01 pm

Wheel comparison on Curiosity after five months of rough travel
Click here and here for original images.

In the past half year the Mars rover Curiosity has moved into the mountainous foothills of Mount Sharp, crossing the roughest and rockiest terrain seen during its entire decade-long sojourn on the red planet.

Such terrain poses a serious threat to the rover’s already damaged wheels. Since early in the mission the science team had discovered that the wheels were more easily damaged by the Martian surface than had been expected when they were designed. Since then engineers have been very careful about picking the rover’s route, weaving it in and out to avoid the worst ground. They also take images of the wheels every few months to see if any additional damage has occurred.

The bottom image to the right is part of the most recent wheel survey, taken on January 11, 2022, the 3,353 sol the rover has been on Mars. The top image was taken about six and a half months earlier, in early June 2021. The numbers indicate the same tread areas in both pictures.

Based on this one comparison of part of one wheel, it appears that Curiosity’s wheels have not experienced much new damage, even though during the last half year it has climbed into the mountains and has been traveling continuously over rocks, stones, and boulders. Even now, as its sits in the stone valley beyond Gordon Notch, the ground everywhere is stark and forbidding. Yet, this wheel appears to show no new damage, suggesting that the rover’s full set of wheels are also holding up quite well considering its recent travels.

I focus on this particular wheel because it is the same wheel I have used for comparison since 2017, and thus provides a nice baseline for change. In fact, a comparison of today’s image with the one from 2017 shows that in four years there has been practically no change.

This data is quite encouraging, and bodes well for the mission, suggesting there is really nothing to stop Curiosity from climbing Mount Sharp for years to come.

Of course, this is a comparison of only one part of one of Curiosity’s six wheels. A review of the other wheels might suggest a different conclusion. I suspect however that the other wheels show the same thing. The engineers of Curiosity have done a miraculous job protecting the wheels these last four years.

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Scientists discover that mid-sized dunes near Mars’ north pole move

11:41 am

Mars' North Pole

Scientists using images from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) collected over six Martian years (6.5 Earth years) have found that the mid-sized dunes dubbed mega-dunes near the north pole actually do move from year to year, unlike similar sized dunes elsewhere on the planet.

Megaripples on Mars are about 1 to 2 meters tall and have 5 to 40 meter spacing, where there size falls between ripples that are about 40 centimeters tall with 1 to 5 meter spacing and dunes that can reach hundreds of meters in height with spacing of 100 to 300 meters. Whereas the megaripples migration rates are slow in comparison (average of 0.13 meters per Earth year), some of the nearby ripples were found to migrate an average equivalent of 9.6 meters (32 feet) per year over just 22 days in northern summer – unprecedented rates for Mars. These high rates of sand movement help explain the megaripple activity.

Previously it was believed that such dunes were static planetwide, left over from a time when Mars’ atmosphere was thicker and could then move them more easily. This data however suggests that the winds produced over the north pole when the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere freezes in winter and sublimates back to a gas in summer are sufficient to shift these dunes in the surrounding giant Olympia Undae dune sea.

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InSight recovering from safe mode caused by Martian dust storm

9:34 am

Engineers have been able to regain contact with the Mars lander InSight after a Martian dust storm that put it in safe mode and cut off all communications for three days.

The mission’s team reestablished contact with InSight Jan. 10, finding that its power was holding steady and, while low, was unlikely to be draining the lander’s batteries. Drained batteries are believed to have caused the end of NASA’s Opportunity rover during an epic series of dust storms that blanketed the Red Planet in 2018.

The lander remains however in safe mode. The engineers hope they can resume limited science operations in about a week. Even before this even the limitations on InSight’s power generation due to dust on its solar panels had forced the science team to only gather data from the seismometer, and even then had to suspend all data gathering periodically.

Though the lander has survived this dust storm, it is presently unclear how much dust remains on its panels and thus how much power it can generate. If it only can generate enough power to keep the lander from freezing, but not do any science, it might be time to shut it down entirely.

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A butte on Mars

11:13 am

A butte on Mars
Click for full photograph.

Cool image time! Because the Martian geology inside the enclosed stone valley beyond Maria Gordon notch is so complex and exposed, the Curiosity science team is spending a lot of time there. As noted in their January 7th update:

[W]e are marvelling at the landscape in front of us, which is very diverse, both in the rover workspace and in the walls around us. It’s a feast for our stratigraphers (those who research the succession in which rocks were deposited and deduce the geologic history of the area from this). We are all looking forward to the story they will piece together when they’ve had a bit of time to think!

The image to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken by the rover’s high resolution camera on December 18th, soon after it entered this stone valley and was part of scan covering both this butte as well as a nearby cliff. I had previously featured a close-up of the top of this butte and its incredible overhang on December 20, 2021. This image however shows the whole butte, which I estimate to be about 30 to 40 feet high is about 10 feet high.

Not only does the butte illustrate well the alien nature of this stark and barren Martian terrain, so does all the terrain surrounding it. The surface everywhere is nothing but pavement stones of all sizes. Once again, there is no life, something you practically never see on Earth.

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Strange land forms on the flanks of Mars’ Arsia Mons volcano

1:24 pm

Strange landforms on the flanks of Arsia Mons
Click for original image. Click here for the context camera image.

Cool image time! The center of the photo to the right was taken by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) on September 5, 2021. For posting here I have rotated, cropped, and reduced it, as well as added to each side the lower resolution context camera image of this region.

The ground slopes downhill to the north. Make sure you click on the image to see the full resolution version. In only a few miles the terrain changes from a mound with small knobs to a smooth area with few knobs to a chaotic area where the larger ridges and knobs are the dominant feature, with hollows and canyons in between.

You should also take a look at the full context camera image. Just to the southeast of the above picture is a large depression that looks like it has been filled with lava, with its western rim covered by that flow. Scientists have taken a lot of high resolution pictures of this depression with MRO, trying to decipher its geology.
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Debris in Perseverance core sample equipment

9:07 am

Debris in core sample carousel on Perseverance
Click for full image.

In attempting to store its sixth core sample on Mars last week, engineers discovered that Perseverance could not do so because several small pieces of the core sample had fallen into the equipment and prevented the drilling bit with the core from inserting itself completely into the sample storage carousel.

To understand the issue precisely, the engineers commanded Perseverance to first extract the bit from the carousel so they could get pictures of it.

The extraction took place yesterday (1/6) and data was downlinked early this morning. These most recent downlinked images confirm that inside the bit carousel there are a few pieces of pebble-sized debris. The team is confident that these are fragments of the cored rock that fell out of the sample tube at the time of Coring Bit Dropoff, and that they prevented the bit from seating completely in the bit carousel.

The photo to the right shows that material at the image’s bottom.

It appears this issue was anticipated when the rover was designed giving engineers a way to remove the debris. They plan to do so, but will proceed slowly as this will be the first time it will be attempted on Mars.

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A Martian cliff

1:30 pm

A strange Martian cliff
Click for full image.

Many features on Mars immediately make one think of the Grand Canyon and the stark dramatic geology of the American southwest. Today’s cool image on the right, cropped and reduced to post here, is a typical example. Photographed on September 7, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), it shows a dramatic cliff face that I estimate is about 3,000 feet high.

A closer look, however, almost always shows that this Martian terrain is not like the American southwest at all, but alien in its own way.

At the base of this abrupt cliff the terrain suddenly changes to a series of smooth downward fan-shaped flows. The cliff evokes rough boulders, avalanches, and chaotic erosion. The fans evoke a gentle and organized erosion of small particles like dust or sand. The two processes are completely different, and yet here the former is butted right up against the latter.

The fans also appear to flow out of hollows in the rough cliff, suggesting that somehow as the cliff erodes in chunks those chunks break into sand or dust, find the lowest points, and then flow downward like liquid.

How strange. How Martian. And how truly beautiful.

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Ice-filled crater on the Martian north polar ice cap

2:15 pm

Ice-filled crater on the Martian north pole ice cap
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on September 18, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and shows a very distinct impact crater on top of the layered deposits of ice mixed with dirt that form the bottom layers as well as surround the visible north pole ice cap on Mars.

I purposely cropped the high resolution image so that the crater is off center to show the dark streaks that appear to blow away from the crater to the northwest, west, and southwest. This asymmetric pattern suggests the wind direction at this location generally flows to the west, but the pattern might also be caused by lighting effects. The location is at 82 degrees north latitude, and the Sun was only 31 degrees high when the picture was taken, causing long shadows. Also, in the full image, you can see a whole strip of similarly oriented streaks, suggesting that these are slope streaks descending a slope going downhill to the northwest.

The overview map below also provides important information about this location.
» Read more

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Ingenuity’s next flight and the plans beyond

1:19 pm

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

In an update posted today written by Ingenuity pilot Martin Cacan, he outlined the engineering team’s goal for the Mars’ helicopter’s next flight, its nineteenth.

This flight, which will take place no earlier than Friday, Jan. 7, takes the scout vehicle out of the South Séítah basin, across the dividing ridge, and up onto the main plateau. The precise landing target for Flight 19 is near the landing site of Flight 8. Images taken during Flight 9 by the rotorcraft’s high-resolution Return-To-Earth (RTE) camera were used to select a safe landing zone.

…Spanning 207 feet (63 meters), this flight will last about 100 seconds at a groundspeed of 2.2 mph (1 meter per second) and altitude of 33 feet (10 meters) while taking 9 new RTE images. The final act of the flight is to turn nearly 180 degrees to flip the RTE camera to a forward-facing orientation for future flights toward the river delta. [emphasis mine]

The green line in the map to the right indicates the exact path, going about 207 feet to the northeast. The red dot marks the location of Perseverance on December 8, 2021, the last time the Perseverance science team updated their map showing the rover’s travels.

The highlighted words are the most important. Cacan also said this in his update:

The current mission goal is to reach the Jezero river delta to aid the Perseverance rover in path planning and scientific discovery.

Assuming the helicopter continues to function correctly, their next flights will apparently be aimed towards the delta. Whether that path will follow the planned route marked by the dashed yellow line, or cut straight across, is not clear. If the latter, that implies they have revised Perseverance’s planned route so that it also cuts straight across from about the point of Ingenuity’s next landing site.

More likely Cacan was not speaking literally, and that the route Ingenuity will take to the delta will follow the planned route, around that crater to the northeast.

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Ice canyons at the Martian north pole

1:46 pm

Ice canyons at the Martian north pole
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on July 24, 2021 by the high resolution camera of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and shows one small portion of the edge of Mars’ north pole ice cap.

The many layers in that ice cap are clearly evident, with some darker because they were probably laid down at a time when the Martian atmosphere was more filled with volcanic ash. According to the presently accepted theory, the layers show the cyclical climate patterns of Mars, caused by the large shifts in its obliquity, or the tilt of the planet along its rotational axis, ranging from 11 to 60 degrees. Presently Mars is tilted 25 degrees, similar to Earth’s 23 degrees. The two extremes cause the planet’s water ice to shift back and forth from the mid-latitudes to the poles, causing the layers.

The height of this layered cliff face is probably about 1,500 feet, though that is a very rough estimate. Notice also that this image shows an ice canyon running from the left to the right and flowing into a much larger ice canyon to the right. The top cliff is probably about a third the height of the bottom cliff.

The overview map below shows gives the context, not only in place but also in time.
» Read more

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The badlands on the floor of Valles Marineris

1:03 pm

The badlands on the floor of Valles Marineris
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The recent discovery that there might be a near surface reservoir of ice on the floor the canyon Valles Marineris, near the Martian equator, immediately brought this location to the forefront as a possible site for establishing colonies. The weather will be less harsh than higher latitudes, the low elevation means a thicker atmosphere, and the terrain will be more appealing than the boring flat northern lowlands.

The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, illustrates however the likely difficulties of landing and living on the floor of Valles Marineris. Taken on July 26, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), the photo shows just one small area of the floor of Ius Chasm, the western part of Valles Marineris and about 300 miles to the east of that water reserve.

In this one picture we can see trapped sand dunes in hollows, eroded depressions, mottled terrain resembling stucco, and innumerable cliffs and sinks and plateaus. For the first manned spacecraft to land on Mars, this is not a good first choice. Even later, when the first bases have been built, this terrain would still be forbidding for the early colonists to land in and traverse.

The overview map below shows exactly where this picture is relative to the rest of the Valles Marineris.
» Read more

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Slope streaks in frozen lava flows on Mars

12:30 pm

Slope streaks on frozen lava
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on June 5, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a ridgeline at the base of the giant volcano Pavonis Mons, with slope streaks on ridge’s north and south sides.

Slope streaks are a mysterious phenomenon unique to Mars. While they resemble an avalanche, they do not change the topography of the surface at all. They appear to occur randomly year round, fading slowly with time. Also, while most are dark, scientists have also spotted bright slope streaks as well.

Slope streaks also only appear on surfaces covered with a layer of fine dust, something that is obviously the case in the cool image to the right. There is so much dust on the surface here that bedrock only appears at the top of the ridge, peeking out in only a few places.

The location of this image, as shown in the overview map below, adds some additional details.
» Read more

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The barren rocky terrain in the mountains of Gale Crater

9:52 am

Curiosity's view looking south towards Mt Sharp, Sol 3333, December 21, 2021
Click for full resolution image. Original photos can be found here, here, here, here, and here.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! Curiosity yesterday used its navigation cameras to take a panorama of the view inside Maria Gordon Notch. The mosaic above, created from five images taken by the right navigation camera, shows the view looking south and uphill towards Mount Sharp. The heights of the nearest four hills are likely ranging from 30 to 100 feet.

The red dotted line indicates the planned route out of Gordon Notch and up onto the Greenheugh Pediment. If you click on the panorama to look at the full resolution version, you will see that the exit route looks extemely rough, possibly too rough for Curiosity to handle. How the science team handles this issue will be fascinating to watch in the coming weeks.

The map to the right gives us an overview. The white line is Curiosity’s actual travels. The red dotted line marks the planned route. The yellow lines indicate the area covered by the panorama above.

The most striking feature of this Martian terrain is its stark barrenness. All one can see in all directions are rocks and inanimate geology. There is no life, none at all. On Earth it is practically impossible to find any mountainous spot as barren as this, even in the most extreme and hostile environments.

As I’ve said before, Mars is strange, Mars is wonderful, and above all, Mars is alien.

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Curiosity: Through the notch and looking back

11:46 am

Looking back at the entrance to Gordon Notch
Click for full image.

The Mars rover Curiosity has now climbed up into Maria Gordon Notch. The image to the right, reduced to post here, was taken by the rover’s left navigation camera and looks back at the entrance to the notch, with the floor and rim of Gale Crater beyond. The crater floor is about 1,700 feet below and the rim is about 30 miles away.

The red dotted line indicates the path Curiosity took after entering the notch, traveling about 80 feet to the southeast. The rover will continue south inside the notch for another 800 feet or so and then turn west, climbing out of the notch and up onto the Greenheugh Pediment and continuing west until it gets to the base of Gediz Vallis Ridge, a ridge that had been in prominent view about a year ago when the rover was north of it but lower down the mountain. (See the panorama in this February 2021 post.)

Below is another picture from a day earlier, this time taken by the rover’s high resolution mast camera. I think it looks up at the top of the western cliff, but now looks at that cliff after having gone past it slightly.
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Ingenuity successfully completes its 18th flight

1:26 pm

According to a JPL Twitter post today, on December 15th Ingenuity successfully completed its 18th flight, flying 754 feet for just over two minutes.

The plan had been to continue north to cross the rough Seitah region as the helicopter heads back to the spot where Perseverance initially dropped it. Though at this moment no specific information about the flight’s direction or landing place have been revealed, its success suggests it went exactly as planned.

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Perseverance scientists: First volcanics then water in Jezero Crater

9:45 am

On December 15th the Perseverance science team presented a summary of the rover’s first nine months exploring the floor of Jezero Crater, finding evidence first of volcanic lava activity followed by several periods where water covered the these same rocks.

“These rocks that we originally thought might be sedimentary rocks, these are in fact igneous [volcanic] rocks,” said Kelsey Moore at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). “And even more excitingly, they’re not just igneous rocks – there’s more history to the story.”

The analysis of the rocks’ compositions revealed minerals that are generally produced by interactions between water and rock, as well as traces of two different salts that were probably left behind as salty water flowed through the cracks and pores in the volcanic rock.

The variety of minerals indicates that these rocks were probably underwater at least twice. “Two different types of liquid with two different types of chemistries points towards two different episodes of liquid water interaction,” said Eva Scheller, also at Caltech.

It seems strange that the scientists were surprised that Jezero Crater has a history of volcanic activity. Most craters when formed have what is called impact melt in their crater interior. The impact not only carves out the crater, the heat of impact melts the rock. Possibly the scientists expected such impact melt to be well buried and not accessible to Perseverance.

Regardless, this data will be used as the baseline for documenting the geological history of this region on Mars as Perseverance continues its journey across the floor of the crater, up onto the delta, and then out of the crater into the uplands beyond.

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Cracking glaciers on Mars

11:47 am

Cracking glaciers on Mars
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Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was released today as the picture of the day for the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Located in the 2,000 long northern mid-latitude strip that I dub Mars’ glacier country, it shows many of the numerous glacial features that are routinely found in images taken in this region. According to Dan Berman, senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona, who wrote the caption,

This observation shows a lobe-shaped debris apron emanating from a massif (shown in the upper left of the image) in the Protonilus Mensae region in the Northern Hemisphere of Mars. These aprons are composed of nearly pure water ice with a layer of debris on the surface protecting the ice from sublimation (going directly from a solid to gaseous state). This image shows different terrain types on the apron that indicate the presence and flow of ice, from smoother polygonal terrain closer to the massif, to rougher, patterned ground commonly called “brain terrain.” Also visible on the apron are a series of linear pits.

Protonilus Mensae is the central mensae region in that mid-latitude strip of glaciers.The overview map below shows the location of this photo in that region. Also below is a close-up of the linear pits and cracked terrain surrounding that oblong mound, as indicated by the white rectangle.
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