Tag: Mars

Scientists discover underground reservoir of hydrogen, likely ice, near Martian equator

8:58 am

Detection of underground hydrogen in Valles Marineris
Click for full image.

In what could be a very significant discovery, scientists using Europe’s Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) have discovered a surprisingly large underground reservoir of hydrogen, likely ice, near Martian equator and inside the solar system’s largest known canyon, Valles Marineris.

The map to the right, reduced to post here, provides all the important data. From its caption:

The coloured scale at the bottom of the frame shows the amount of ‘water-equivalent hydrogen’ (WEH) by weight (wt%). As reflected on these scales, the purple contours in the centre of this figure show the most water-rich region. In the area marked with a ‘C’, up to 40% of the near-surface material appears to be composed of water (by weight). The area marked ‘C’ is about the size of the Netherlands and overlaps with the deep valleys of Candor Chaos, part of the canyon system considered promising in our hunt for water on Mars.

What the caption does not note is the latitude of this hydrogen, about 3 to 10 degrees south latitude. Assuming the hydrogen represents underground ice, this would be the first detection on Mars below 30 degrees latitude, and the very first in the equatorial regions. Data from orbit has suggested that Mars has a lot of water ice, found near the surface more and more as you move into higher latitudes above 30 degrees and making Mars much like Antarctica. Almost no ice however had until now been detected below 30 degrees latitude. As the European Space Agency’s press release noted,
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Visible clean water ice on Mars

11:57 am

Crater with ice scarp
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, is today’s picture of the day for the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Taken on September 13, 2021, it shows an exposed scarp on the southern inner wall of a small 800-foot-wide crater.

What makes that scarp intriguing is its blue color. As noted by Shane Byrne of the Lunar and Planetary Lab University of Arizona, who wrote the caption:

This north-facing cliff appears to expose icy material that’s similar to other pole-facing scarps showing buried ice elsewhere on the planet. These cliffs give us a cut-away view of the buried ice in that location and can help answer questions about what the Martian climate was like when this ice formed.

The crater itself sits inside a much larger crater, as shown in the wider picture below.
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Curiosity looks back at its entire journey

10:03 am

Curiosity looking back across Gale Crater
Click for high resolution mosaic. Original images here, here, here, and here.

Wide overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The mosaic above was created from four photos taken by Curiosity’s left navigation camera on December 12, 2021, just after the rover had moved into Maria Gordon Notch. The view is to the north, looking back at the rover’s journey climbing up the floor of Gale Crater into the foothills of Mount Sharp. The rim of Gale Crater can be seen about 25 to 30 miles away.

The cliff in shadow on the left is about 40 feet high. The cliff in sunlight on the right is between 30 to 60 feet high, depending on where you measure.

The overview map to the right shows Curiosity’s entire journey, with the yellow lines indicating the approximate area covered by the mosaic above. All told the rover has climbed about 1,700 feet since it landed. While much of the rover’s route is blocked from our view by the cliffs on left, the nearest sand dune sea in the center of the mosaic is the one that the rover circled around from January 2021 to June 2021.
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Curiosity takes a close look at a Martian cliff

11:15 am

A cliff of Mars
Click for full resolution. Original images here and here.

Curiosity has now moved up and into Maria Gordon Notch, a gap in the mountains of Gale Crater that is about forty feet wide, with a 40-foot-high cliff on its western side and a 30 to 60 foot cliff on its eastern side.

The mosaic above, created from two navigation camera images, looks up at the top half of that western cliff. Note the many many layers, each one of which records some climate or volcanic event in Mars’ geological history. The Mars we see today took a long time and many events to become what it is. Such layers however have not been seen everywhere by Curiosity. Compare for example this layered cliff with the massive outcrop dubbed Siccar Point and looked at closely by the rover in October. In that outcrop the layers were either non-existent, or merged together during some subsequent geological process.

Note also the pond of sand/dust at the center-bottom, nestled in a hollow but sitting almost vertical. That the dust can maintain itself at such an angle illustrates Mars’ lighter gravity, about 39% of Earth’s, which in turn allows for a much steeper angle of repose. That lighter gravity also allows for some sections of rock to stick out more precariously than possible on Earth.

As Curiosity moves through the notch in the next few days, more such cool pictures will become available, and I shall post them.

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Strange eroded glacial flows in unnamed crater on Mars

12:20 pm

Eroded glacial flows in unnamed crater on Mars
Click for full resolution image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on November 1, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a series of strange glacial-like flows coming off the western slopes of the central peak of a 40-mile-wide unnamed crater, located smack dab in what I call Mars’ glacier country, that 2,000 long mid-latitude strip where almost every image shows evidence of glaciers.

The cropped section to the right doesn’t really do these strange flows justice. Make sure you click on the image to see the full resolution version. There are numerous separate flows coming off that central peak. Each appears to show that as time passed, each flow traveled a shorter distance down the mountain, leaving a moraine behind at higher and higher points.

The overview map below provides the context.
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Where Ingenuity and Perseverance presently sit in Jezero Crater

9:15 am

Perseverance and Ingenuity, December 8, 2021
Click for interactive map.

The map to the right, annotated to post here, shows the present location of the rover Perseverance (the red dot) in relation to the 17th flight of the helicopter Ingenuity (indicated by the green line and dot) that successfully occurred on December 5, 2021.

Perseverance has been very very very very slowly retreating south, following the same route it took to move into the rough sand dune region the scientists have dubbed Seitah. Based on their long term plans, the rover will retrace its path (the white dotted line) to its landing site, and then continue along the yellow dashed line to eventually reach the base of the delta, dubbed Three Forks, that in the distant past poured through a gap in the rim of Jezero Crater.

The helicopter meanwhile is also retracing its flights, heading north to the spot where Perseverance first placed it on the ground. Because of the seasonally thinner atmosphere, the helicopter’s flights during that return journey must be shorter, which is why the 17th flight only traveled halfway across Seitah. In crossing it the first time it had done so in one flight. Now it will take two.

During that 17th flight it appears that the topography between the rover and the helicopter’s landing site caused a loss of communications as the helicopter was landing.

The Ingenuity team believes the 13-foot (4-meter) height difference between the Perseverance rover and the top of Bras [an outcrop] contributed to the loss of communications when the helicopter descended toward the surface at the end of its flight.

That loss of communications apparently caused no problems, but it will likely mean that Ingenuity will do no more flights until Perseverance can get closer and better positioned.

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Curiosity moves into a mountain gap

10:51 am

Maria Gordon Notch
Click for full resolution version. Original images here and here.

Curiosity's location, December 6, 2021
Click for interactive map.

For the last three weeks the Curiosity science team has had the rover poking about at the base of the 40 foot cliff on the right of the panorama above. At that location many rocks and boulders had fallen from the top of the cliff, which gave them an opportunity to study the geology of the plateau above, even though it was literally beyond reach.

Beginning yesterday that work ended, and the science team finally made the commitment to move forward, into the gap above where the rover will turn right, climb up onto that plateau through a notch they have dubbed Maria Gordon Notch. The map to the right shows this coming route with the red dotted line.

Once in that notch Curiosity will truly be in the mountains of Gale Crater, even if those mountains are only the foothills to Mount Sharp.

It is interesting to contrast the roughness of the terrain that Curiosity is now routinely traveling, with the relatively benign ground that Perseverance is traversing on the floor of Jezero Crater. While Curiosity is pushing forward into steeper and rougher terrain, the Perseverance team is retreating from the somewhat mild sand dune ground of South Seitah, even though that ground is far less challenging than anything faced by Curiosity. You can see this retreat at the interactive map here. Zoom in and place your cursor over each waypoint. Rather than push forward, the Perseverance team seems willing to have the rover retreat and retrace its route around Seitah, even though to retrace those steps will likely take a few weeks, during which they will cover no new ground and will likely learn little new.

Why the Perseverance team seems so timid is puzzling. It could be they are still working out the kinks of their operation. It could be that they want to take no risks at all this early in their mission. And it could also be that the team culture at Perseverance is simply less daring than that of the Curiosity team.

Only time will answer this question. I suspect as the Perseverance mission unfolds its scientists will become more bold. We just need to give them time.

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Ingenuity’s images from 16th flight on November 21st

11:18 am

Ingenuity color image from 16th flight
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, reduced and enhanced to post here, was the first color image taken by Ingenuity during its 16th flight on Mars on November 21st. The picture was taken about fifteen seconds after take-off, and I think looks west toward the rim of Jezero Crater in the distance.

The flight itself was relatively short, essentially a quick hop about 380 feet to the north to land at the edge of the rough area dubbed Seitah. The team is going to slowly take the helicopter back to its initial landing field, Wright field, over several hops. This was the first.

If you want to peruse all 113 images from the flight, go here and set the sol range from 268 (November 20) to 274 (November 26). That will show all 113 images taken during the November 21st flight.

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Mars Express successfully relays data from Zhurong to Earth

10:21 am

The European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter has successfully been used to relay data from China’s Zhurong Mars rover to Earth and then to China.

In November, ESA’s Mars Express and CNSA’s Zhurong teams carried out a series of experimental communication tests in which Mars Express used this ‘in the blind’ mode to listen for signals sent to it by the Zhurong Rover.

The experiments culminated in a successful test on 20 November. “Mars Express successfully received the signals sent by the rover, and our colleagues in the Zhurong team confirmed that all the data arrived on Earth in very good quality.” says ESA’s Gerhard Billig.

Apparently, normal communications would first involve “handshake” communications between the two, but that requires communications frequencies Zhurong does not use. Mars Express instead had to grab the data on the blind. The test was a success, which means the ESA will likely act as another communications relay for Zhurong, in addition to China’s Tianwen-1 orbiter, as the rover’s mission on Mars continues.

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Sculptured lava south of Olympus Mons?

10:51 am

Sculptured lava?
Click for full image.

Time for a cool image! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on September 8, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a region of strangely sculptured terrain located several hundred miles south of Olympus Mons.

It appears the prevailing winds are to the west. The question is whether the wind is shaping a hard lava surface, over eons, or is shaping instead layers of dust or volcanic ash quickly and seasonally. At this location either is possible. In fact, we might even be seeing evidence of both at the same time.

The overview map below shows that the location is just outside the Medusae Fossae Formation, the largest volcanic ash deposit on Mars.
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Ingenuity completes 16th Mars flight

9:38 am

According to a tweet by the Ingenuity team, the Mars helicopter successfully completed its 16th flight on Mars on November 21st.

“#MarsHelicopter continues to thrive!” mission personnel wrote in a tweet posted Monday (Nov. 22). “The mighty rotorcraft completed its 16th flight on the Red Planet last weekend, traveling 116 meters northeast for 109 seconds. It captured color images during the short hop, but those will come down in a later downlink.”

No images have as yet been downloaded from the flight.

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Video of Ingenuity’s 13th flight

11:47 am

Using the high resolution camera on Perseverance, the science team has now released two videos taken of Ingenuity’s 13th flight on Mars, on September 4, 2021.

One is a very wide view, which makes it hard to see the helicopter. The closer view can be seen here.

At the beginning of the video, Ingenuity is near the lower left of frame, at a distance of about 980 feet (300 meters) from the rover. It climbs to an altitude of to 26 feet (8 meters) before beginning its sideways translation. The helicopter leaves the camera’s field of view on the right. Soon after, the helicopter returns into the field of view (the majority of frames that did not capture helicopter after it exited the camera’s field of view were purposely not downlinked from Mars by the team) and lands at a location near its takeoff point.

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Volcanic vent on Mars

2:43 pm

Overview of Arsia Mons pits

To understand today’s cool image we really should start from a distance and zoom in. The overview map to the right focuses in on the two southernmost giant volcanoes in the string of three that sit to the east of Mars’ biggest volcano, Olympus Mons, and to the west of the planet’s biggest canyon, Valles Marineris.

The black dots mark the locations of the many high resolution photos taken by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that I have featured previously on Behind the Black. Many are isolated openings with no related geological features. Others appear to be skylights into a more extensive lava tube, hinted at by either a continuing surface depression or a series of similar skylights.

The white dot marks the location of today’s cool image, about 350 miles south of Arsia Mons’ caldera.
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UAE Al-Amal Mars orbiter finds surprising variations in Mars atmosphere

10:32 am

Oxygen variations in Martian atmosphere
Click for full graphic.

The United Arab Emirates Al-Amal (“hope” in English) Mars orbiter has discovered unexpected variations of oxygen and carbon monoxide in the Martian atmosphere.

The EMM team had expected to observe a relatively uniform emission from oxygen at 130.4 nm across the planet and yet here we are, faced with unpredicted variations of 50% or more in the brightness.

The image to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, shows the variations in oxygen on Mars’s dayside. Though the map does not indicate the geography below, the concentration of oxygen in the northern latitudes appears to correspond to the planet’s northern lowland plains. In fact, the variations should not have been a surprise, since the surface of Mars has such a stark dichotomy between its northern and southern hemispheres.

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Ingenuity’s 16th Martian flight is now scheduled for November 18

9:27 am

According to an update today from the Ingenuity science team, Ingenuity’s sixteenth flight on Mars is scheduled for no earlier than November 18th, and will be a relatively short hop of about 100+ meters to the north, compared to previous flights.

It appears the roughness of the terrain on this flight can cause an accumulating error in its flight software. Because the landing area is also rough, they want to bring the helicopter down sooner to make sure it lands close to where it should.

The present plan is to hop north to return to the location of Ingenuity’s first flight, at Wright Brothers Field. Along the way they will also consider installing an update in the flight software to improve the helicopter’s capabilities.

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Craters in the soft Martian northern lowland plains

12:25 pm

Craters in the soft Martian northern lowland plains
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was a featured image today from the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The caption, written by Carol Weitz of the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona, focused on the wind patterns created within these craters.

These impact craters in the northern middle latitudes have interesting interiors: all of them have wind-blown (aeolian) ripples.

Outside of the craters and along the crater floors, the ripples are all oriented in the same direction. However, along the walls of some of the larger craters, the ripples are situated radially away from the center, indicating the winds moving inside the larger craters can be influenced by the topography of the crater wall.

Additionally, many of the larger craters have layered mesas along their floors that are likely sedimentary deposits laid down after the craters formed but prior to the development of the aeolian ripples.

I am further intrigued by the rimless nature of these craters, as well as the lack of significant rocky debris at their edges. They all look like the bolides that created them impacted into a relatively soft surface that, rather than break up into rocks and boulders, melted, flowed, and then quickly refroze into these depressions.

The location, as always, provides us a possible explanation.
» Read more

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Zhurong’s continuing travels on Mars

10:26 am

Zhurong overview map
Click for original map.

This past week the Chinese press released a new but limited update on the status of both its Mars orbiter Tianwen-1 and its Mars rover Zhurong.

The map to the right uses as its background a high resolution picture from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. I have superimposed Zhurong’s route in green. You can get an idea of how far the rover has traveled since resuming communications with Earth in late October by comparing this map with the one I posted then. After stopping at a small sand dune (the crescent-shaped white features), it curved around to head to the southeast towards a rough area and a trough that is thought to be filled with sediment.

Meanwhile, the orbiter has shifted its orbit, changing from one dedicated mainly as providing a communications relay between Zhurong and Earth to one that now allows it to begin a two-year photographic survey of Mars.

To supplement the resulting gaps in communications for Zhurong, China and the European Space Agency (ESA) have made their first test using ESA’s Mars Express satellite as a relay satellite. Both hope to know soon whether it worked.

In either case, Zhurong’s travels will likely be slowed somewhat due to the reduction in communications access.

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Snow on Martian dunes

12:58 pm

Snowy dunes near the Martian north pole
Click for full image.

Close-up of snowy dunes
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The first photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on September 19, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and shows what appears to be snow nestled in the hollows of many dunes.

The second photo, cropped to post here, shows in high resolution the area in the white box.

Is that snow water, or dry ice? The location is very far north, 76 degrees latitude, so it could be either. Since the photo was requested by Candice Hansen of the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona, I emailed her to ask. Her answer:

Early in the spring all the bright stuff is dry ice. As it gets later in the spring it is probably still mostly dry ice but with HiRISE images alone we cannot really distinguish the composition of the ice. In-between the dunes it is almost certainly bare ground late in the spring, but since the dunes are dark the surface just looks bright in contrast

This picture was taken in summer, which suggests the snow is probably water, not dry ice. Yet, all the snow is found in the north-facing hollows, places that will remain mostly in shadow at this high latitude, 76 degrees north. Thus, it is possible that the snow is the last remaining traces of the thin dry ice mantle that covers the Martian poles down to about 60 degrees latitude during the winter, and sublimates away in summer.

Hansen had requested a whole bunch of similar images of such snowy dunes. As she explained,
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A volcanic extrusion on the floor of Valles Marineris?

2:52 pm

A volcanic extrusion on the floor of Valles Marineris?
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on August 31, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the science team labels a “possible contact between two units.”

I think that contact is the point where that eroded mountain touches the surrounding smooth canyon floor. The mountain itself looks to me to be a very eroded extrusion of lava that was placed there from below a very very long time ago, covered later by material, and now exposed for a long enough period that its surface appears to have been carved by wind and even possibly flowing water or ice.

Because it is lava it is more resistant to erosion, which is why it sits higher than the smooth terrain around it. Even though both experienced the same processes of wear over time, the mountain’s surface was only carved away partly, while the material that had been in the floor was washed away entirely.

This is all a guess. However, a look below at the overview map, showing this mountain’s location on Mars, as well as MRO’s wider view from its context camera, I think strengthens my hypothesis.
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Frozen lake bed in the Martian high latitudes?

2:03 pm

Frozen lakebed in the Martian high latitudes?
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image comes from today’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s (MRO) high resolution picture of the day, rotated and cropped to post here. The original was taken back on March 28, 2017.

What formed those strange circular ridges and the many small cracks and hollows? The caption provided is somewhat vague and I think confusing:

This formation looks like a crater from a meteor impact rather than an ancient caldera of a volcano. Connected to the crater is a carved-out area that resembles a lake bed. At high resolution, we might be able to determine the likelihood of a water lake bed or lava bed. This observation will give insight into some of the interesting geology of this area.

The crater this caption is referring to is not visible in the image provided. It can be seen to the west of this location, in the MRO context camera picture below.
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Curiosity: Approaching the saddle

9:21 am

The saddle ahead
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, reduced to post here, was taken on November 5, 2021 by Curiosity’s high resolution camera, and looks forward at its planned route up onto the saddle ahead, where the rover will turn right and climb up into Maria Gordon Notch. (See this October post for a map outlining the rover’s future travels.) I think that cliff face is between 40 to 60 feet high, though this is a very wild guess.

As noted by Abigail Fraeman of JPL on the Curiosity blog on November 3, 2021,

The terrain is beginning to steepen as Curiosity gets close to the end of this region, so even though we’re only a few drives away from our last drill site … we’ve already climbed 25 m higher!

The route ahead looks equally steep, though the ground actually appears less rough, with fewer large jagged boulders that Curiosity must avoid to protect its wheels.

It will likely be at least one to three weeks however before Curiosity gets to that saddle. The science team has begun a drilling campaign at the present location, and this will take time, depending on how many holes they decide to drill.

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Ingenuity completes 15th flight

9:04 am

Ingenuity landing on November 6th
Click for full image.

No details have been released, but based on the latest raw images downloaded from the Mars rover Perseverance today, the helicopter Ingenuity successfully completed its 15th flight in Jezero Crater yesterday.

The image to the right is the last of five released this morning, showing the helicopter’s shadow on the ground, just before Ingenuity touched down. Note how the shadow of Ingenuity’s four legs appear oriented level relative to the ground. While the first of the five images shows the shadow tilted, as if the helicopter is making a last turn, the last four photos all show the legs oriented properly.

We will have to wait now for official confirmation.

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Ingenuity next flight will begin route retracing its path

9:20 am

Overview map

The Ingenuity engineering team has revealed that the helicopter’s 15th flight on Mars will have it begin retracing its steps, following approximately the same flight route as it heads back towards Perseverance’s landing site in Jezero Crater.

Flight #15 is the start of our journey back to Wright Brothers Field [the helicopter’s initial flight test area just north of the landing site]. Taking place no earlier than Saturday, Nov. 6 at 9:22 a.m. PT, or 12:03 LMST (local Mars time), the 254th sol (Martian day) of the Perseverance mission, Flight #15 will return Ingenuity back to the Raised Ridges region, imaged in Flight #10. In this flight the helicopter will traverse 1,332 feet (406 meters) during 130 seconds of flight, travelling at 11.1 mph (5 mps) groundspeed. We’ll capture color return-to-earth (RTE) high resolution (13MP) images, one post-takeoff pointed to the SW, and nine pointed toward the NW along the flight-path. Nominal altitude for the flight is expected to be 39.3 feet (12 meters) above ground level.

This will be the second flight of Ingenuity during Mars’ summer low air-density, requiring that the rotor blades are spun at 2,700 RPM to compensate. This flight will generate critical high-RPM motor performance, which the team will use to design and tailor upcoming low-density flights in the months ahead.

Perseverance is presently sitting in an area they have dubbed Seitah, a region the rover skirted around to get to this point. I had hoped both the helicopter and rover would return to the north cutting across Seitah and thus scout out new terrain. Instead, it appears that both the rover and helicopter will return as initially planned, traveling over the same ground both took to get where they are today.

In other words, the teams have decided to take the safest route, though it will provide them much less new science data. While this might seem prudent, it really appears overly cautious, based on the capabilities of Perseverance and the roughness of the terrain in Seitah. Curiosity is presently traveling across far more difficult terrain in the mountains at the foot of Mt Sharp, and it is doing so with wheels that are damaged and not as well designed as Perseverance’s. Not roving in uncharted terrain seems a waste of Perseverance’s capabilities.

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The strange surface of Mars’ north pole icecap

1:02 pm

Mars' north pole icecap
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and annotated to post here, was taken on September 17, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows us a very small section of Mars’ north pole icecap.

What are we looking at? The picture was taken in summer, so by this point the thin mantle of dry ice that falls as snow in the winter and covers the north pole down to about 60 degrees latitude has sublimated away. This surface thus is water ice interspersed with Martian dust.

Yet, unlike the Antarctic icecap on Earth, the ice surface is not smooth and flat. Instead, this Martian ice has a surface that is a complex arrangement of hollows and ridges, all about the same size. Why?

And what are the two larger white spots? What caused them and why are they the only differently-sized objects in the picture?

The full resolution close-up, found at the image website, provides some answers to these questions.
» Read more

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Two skylights into connected Martian lava tube?

3:33 pm

Two skylights into a connected Martian lava tube?
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and annotated to post here, was taken on September 1, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). I have annotated it to note the two apparent skylights that appear aligned along a north-south depression.

The grade is downhill to the north. If you look at the full image you will see that this north-south depression extends for a considerable distance beyond the edges of the cropped image above, with that depression appearing to dissipate to the north into a series of parallel very shallow depressions, almost like the lava had flowed out of the tube and formed branching surface rivulets heading south.

The overview map shows that this tube is on the northern flanks of the volcano Arsia Mons.
» Read more

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Curiosity looks back across the alien landscape of Mars

12:45 pm

Gale Crater, October 31, 2021
Click for image.

Cool image time! The photo above, the first of 21 identical images taken by Curiosity’s right navigation camera, taken at intervals of about thirteen seconds on October 31st, was probably snapped as part of an effort to spot a moving dust devil. At the resolution available to my software, I see nothing when I compare all 21 photos.

What I do see is a remarkably alien landscape. In the distance can be seen the mountains that mark the rim of Gale Crater, 30-plus miles away. On the image’s right edge you can see the rising slope heading up to the peak of Mount Sharp about 13,000 feet higher.

In the center are those blobby mesas that make this terrain look so strange. For the past decade Curiosity has been traveling from the floor of the crater on the picture’s far left to circle around that dark sand dune sea to climb up the mountain slopes in the foreground in front of those mesas.

It is now heading to the right, into the mountains that make up Mount Sharp. Such a view of the floor of Gale Crater will thus be for the next few years more difficult to catch, as the mountains themselves will block the view. Assuming the rover survives long enough, it will have to climb much higher before it can get such an expansive view again.

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Holes in snowy ice on Mars?

1:30 pm

Holes in snowy ice on Mars?
Click for full image.

Cool image time! Today we return to the regions surrounding Milankovic Crater in the high northern latitudes of Mars. The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on June 1, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a spray of impact craters where the bolides apparently landed in relatively soft material. The location itself is about 10 miles to the southeast of the 74-mile-wide crater, and sits within its rim ejecta blanket.

The label for the image says this is showing “crater modification,” which suggests that the rimless nature of these craters became so after their creation. This location, at 54 north latitude, is in a region of Mars where scientists have found a lot of evidence of near surface ice. For example, within Mikankovic Crater itself they have identified numerous scarps with clearly seen pure ice layers.

If ice is close to the surface here, then the ground could be like soft snow on Earth, especially because Mars’ lighter gravity would not compress that ice as much. Think about what happens when you toss pebbles into soft snow. They fall through, and leave behind holes not unlike the ones we see in this picture. Later, sunlight would begin to modify the holes so that their edges grow outward, once again exactly as we see here.

The overview map below as always gives some context, which in this case has less to do with Mars but with Elon Musk and Starship.
» Read more

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One last look at a Martian mountaintop

9:14 am

Siccar Point
For the original images go here and here.

The image above is a mosaic made from two Curiosity navigation photos taken on October 23, 2021 and combined, cropped, and reduced to post here. It shows the top 30 feet or so of Siccar Point, the spectacular outcrop that I have featured several times previously.

Curiosity has now traveled past this outcrop, so that this view above is no longer visible to the rover. I post it now as a farewell image of what I think is the most breath-taking feature yet seen by any planetary lander — manned or unmanned — since the first set down on the Moon in the mid-1960s. It also illustrates with great clarity the alien nature of Mars. Those delicate overhanging rocks would not be possible on Earth, with a gravity about two and a half times heavier than Mars.

Note too that I have not enhanced the contrast or brightness. I think the twilight light here actually gives us a sense of the real brightness of a clear Martian day. Because the Sun is much farther away, even at high noon it provides much less illumination than on Earth. A bright day on Mars to our Earth-adapted eyes will always feel like dusk.

Meanwhile the science team is quickly pushing the rover south, to get…

…closer to the area we are targeting for our next drill campaign. This drive should leave us with bedrock in the workspace for additional contact science on the weekend. This terrain continues to be very challenging, with large boulders, sharp rocks that are wheel hazards, and sand ripples, like the terrain shown in the image. These drives take a while to plan to make sure we are avoiding all the hazards while getting to where science wants to go. Our paths end up looking a little “drunk” as we weave our way around obstacles.

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Curiosity marches on into the mountains

1:09 pm

Curiosity marches onward to Maria Gordon Notch
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Overview map
Click for interactive map

With the end of the solar conjunction in the first half of October, blocking communications with Mars because the Sun was in the way, Curiosity has resumed its travels. It has moved past the spectacular outcrop I have highlighted previously, an outcrop the science team has labeled Siccar Point.

They are now moving south at the base of the cliff to the west, the top of which is a plateau they call the Greenheugh Pediment, heading for a gap where the rover will be able to turn right and head up onto that pediment. The red dotted line on the overview map to the right shows this route, which corresponds to the red dotted line on the photo above.

I estimate the cliffs on both sides of Maria Gordon Notch are about 100 feet high. The notch itself I estimate is about 750 feet away. At the pace Curiosity has been traveling across this rough ground, it could probably reach it in about two to three weeks. However, I expect the science team will stop at least once along the way to do more detailed science work, so that journey might take a month or slightly more.

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Ingenuity completes 14th flight on Mars

11:31 pm

Ingenuity's shadow below it during 14th flight
Ingenuity’s shadow below it during 14th flight.
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On October 24th, Ingenuity successfully completed its 14th flight on Mars, a short test hop up and down to see if the helicopter could function properly as the air pressure in the Martian atmosphere drops due to seasonal variations.

As planned, the helicopter executed its first 2,700 rpm flight, proving that Ingenuity is capable of flying in the weeks and months ahead on Mars, during which seasonal changes on the surface will result in decreases in air density. The short 23-second flight included a peak altitude of 16 feet (5 meters) above ground level, with a small sideways translation of 7 feet (2 meters) to avoid a nearby sand ripple.

I predict the next flight will head north, leap-frogging past Perseverance to get a better view of the South Seitah area so that the rover team can decide whether they can continue north through that terrain or retreat backwards.

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