Japan delays launch of Mars sample return mission due to problems with its H3 rocket

Japan’s space agency JAXA last week officially delayed the launch of its MMX Mars sample return mission, from later this year until the next Mars launch window in 2026.

A September 2024 launch would have seen MMX reach the Red Planet in August 2025 and return to Earth with around 0.35 oz (10 grams) of samples of the Mars moon Phobos in 2029. But the mission now must wait until the next Mars launch window opens in late 2026; its samples are slated to reach Earth in 2031.

The delay is because of JAXA’s ongoing problems getting its new H3 rocket off the ground. The first test launch last year failed, and though the next launch attempt is now scheduled for February, the agency decided it wanted more time to prove out the rocket before putting the Mars mission on it.

This decision once again highlights the overall failure of JAXA to produce for Japan a viable space effort. It is long past time for the Japanese government to take control from this agency, and allow the private sector to compete freely for business. Right now Japan’s continuing failures in space are downright embarrassing, compared to its Asian neighbors of China, India, and South Korea.

The mining potential on Mars

The mining potential on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on October 30, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Labeled simply as a “terrain sample,” it was probably taken not as part of any specific research project but to fill a gap in the schedule in order to properly maintain the camera’s temperature.

Nonetheless, the larger region where this photo is located is one of great interest to scientists as well as to future explorers. First note the colors. The wide variations between the bright orange of that peak (only a few tens of feet high) and the light orange and aqua-green of the bedrock to the north and south suggest a terrain with a lot of different materials within it.

The location is in the dry equatorial regions, so the swirls visible on the plateaus north and south of that small peak are not related to near surface ice. Instead, this is warped bedrock, with those swirls also suggesting material of a varied nature, exposed to the surface by erosion processes.
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Dunes on the floor of Valles Marineris

Overview map

Dunes on the floor of Valles Marineris
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on September 26, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a field of scattered elongated dunes on a flat older surface with craters and what appear to be smaller ripple dunes (in the lower left). The large elongated dunes tend to be oriented in an east-west manner, while the older tiny ripple dunes appear to have a north-south orientation.

Very clearly the larger dunes appear to be traveling across that flat older surface, though whether there is any documented movement is unknown. Generally (though there are exceptions) scientists have found most of the dunes on Mars to be either inactive, or if they are moving because of the wind that movement is very tiny per year. In this case there is one dark spot on the dunes, near the center of the picture, where it appears a collapse might have occurred, suggesting recent change.

On the center right of the picture is the end point of a long ridgeline extending 10 to 12 miles to the east and rising about 7,300 feet, as shown in the overview map above. The small rectangle in the inset shows the area covered by the photograph.

At the base of that ridgeline can be seen a series of terraces descending to the west, suggesting that this hill might be volcanic in nature, with each terrace indicating a separate lava flow. The location is in the dry equatorial regions, so near-surface ice is likely not an explanation.

In the inset the mountain wall to the north is the large mountain chain that bisects this part of Valles Marineris. It overwhelms this small 7,300-foot-high ridge, rising more than 22,000 feet from these dunes with its high point still one or two thousand feet below the rim of Valles Marineris itself.

Once again, the grand scenery of Mars amazes. Imaging hiking a trail along that ridgeline, with the mountains rising far above you to the north and south.

The ancientness of rocks on Mars

Ancient rocks on Mars
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Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on December 27, 2023 by the high resolution camera on the Mars rover Curiosity. It shows what is a somewhat typical rock found on the ground as Curiosity climbs Mount Sharp in Gale Crater.

Two features stand out. First, the many layers illustrate again the cyclical nature of Martian geology. Many sedimentary events occurred over a long time to create this rock, each cycle putting down a new layer, with some intervening time periods possibly removing layers as well. Such layering has now become evident in both ground photos taken by rovers as well as orbital images.

Second, the delicate nature of some layers indicates the incredibly slow erosion process on Mars, enhanced by the red planet’s one-third gravity. The atmosphere is incredibly thin, less than 0.1% of Earth’s. Yet given time the wind had been able to wear away the edges of this rock. The thin atmosphere and light gravity has also allowed some material to remain in a delicate manner that would be impossible on Earth.

Thus, for these thin flakes to have formed has required a great deal of time. The very nature of this rock speaks of an ancient terrain, shaped slowly by inanimate processes with no active life around to disturb things.

Curiosity science team releases movies of Mars from dawn to dusk

Using its front and rear hazard avoidence cameras, the Curiosity science team had the rover take two full sets of images looking in one direction for twelve hours straight in order to create two movies of Mars that show an entire day, from dawn to dusk.

I have embedded both movies below. From the press release:

When NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover isn’t on the move, it works pretty well as a sundial, as seen in two black-and-white videos recorded on Nov. 8, the 4,002nd Martian day, or sol, of the mission. The rover captured its own shadow shifting across the surface of Mars using its black-and-white Hazard-Avoidance Cameras, or Hazcams.

Instructions to record the videos were part of the last set of commands beamed up to Curiosity just before the start of Mars solar conjunction, a period when the Sun is between Earth and Mars. Because plasma from the Sun can interfere with radio communications, missions hold off on sending commands to Mars spacecraft for several weeks during this time.

The first looks forward, into Gediz Vallis, where Curiosity will eventually travel. The second looks back down Mt Sharp and out across the rim of Gale Crater.
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Mapping the major lava flood events in Mars’ volcano country

The volcanic events in Mars' volcano country
Click for original map.

In a paper just released, scientists have used the orbital data from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) to map on Mars forty different past volcanic eruptions of extensive flood lava covering large regions, all within the region I dub “volcano country” because its entire surface seems mostly shaped by flows of lava.

The map above, figure 1 from the paper, shows the study area (within the white rectangle), with its global context and additional information added by me on the right. Most of the largest earthquakes detected by InSight ran from north-to-south down the center of the white box. The named features are all large flood lava events, with the youngest being Athabasca. Within the Cerburus Plains feature the researchers mapped many smaller events which brought the total up to forty. From the abstract:

An area almost as large as Europe was investigated. The study revealed the products of more than 40 volcanic events, with one of the largest flows infilling Athabasca Valles with a volume of 4,000 km3. The surface appearance and material properties suggest that Elysium Planitia is composed of basalt, the most common type of lava on Earth. The area also experienced several large floods of water, and there is evidence that lava and water interacted in the past. However, while there could be ice in the ground today, it likely occurs in small patches.

None of these flood lava events involved the gigantic volcanoes that surround this region. Instead, the lava erupted from vents within this region, and then flowed downgrade to flood large areas, sometimes covering over parts of earlier lava floods. All also flowed much faster than lava on Earth, flooding vast regions — comparable to entire countries — often in mere weeks.

Isolated mesa on Mars

An Isolated mesa on Mars
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Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 13, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The central butte is about 100 feet high. Not only are its flanks terraced, suggesting sedimentary layers, note the many black dots on its northern slopes. Those dots appear to be many boulders that appear to have rolled down the slopes to settle mostly near the mesa’s base.

The boxwork ridges to the west and south suggest the ground was fractured in some event to produce cracks, which were later filled with material that was erosion resistent. As the terrain was worn away by wind it left these ridges behind.

The prevailing winds in this region are believed to blow mostly to the south, which might explain the parallel ridges south of the mesa. Or not. On this I am guessing entirely.
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Curiosity takes a close-up of distant cliffs

Panorama on December 20, 2023
Panorama on December 20, 2023. Click for full image.

Close-up of a distant cliff
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Cool image time! The picture to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, was taken on December 21, 2023 by the chemistry camera (ChemCam) on the rover Curiosity. Originally designed to take close-ups of rocks very nearby the rover, the science team over time discovered that they could also use this camera to get close-ups of very distant objects, providing them another way to study the geology in Gale Crater and on Mount Sharp.

The picture to the right I think shows the horizon area indicated by the arrow on the panorama above, taken the day before. Note the many many layers, a geological feature that Curiosity has discovered is ubiquitous on Mars. Over eons the entire surface of the red planet has been layered repeatedly by cyclical geological events, producing layers within layers within layers. I guarantee that when Curiosity gets closer to this cliff it will see layers inside the smallest layers ChemCam can see now.

The red dotted line on the panorama above indicates the approximate planned route that Curiosity will eventually take, cutting across in front of that mountain and turning south somewhere near but to the west of where the cliff in this picture is located.
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A glacial lake on Mars?

A glacial lake in a
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Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 30, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

It shows what appears to be a glacial flow of ice, flowing downhill to the southwest and inside a wide canyon about three miles across. The canyon rims to the north and south are about 2,000 to 2,100 feet above the canyon’s lowest point, indicated by the string of “+” signs.

This close-up view immediately suggests a canyon whose glacier flows outward to the southwest into open lowland terrain, though the three craters, because they are undistorted, suggests that this flow is presently not active. That suggestion however would be wrong. It is always necessary to understand Martian geology to not only take close-in views at high resolution, but to zoom back and see the terrain in context.
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Ingenuity’s engineers explain what they have learned flying the helicopter on Mars

Link here. The essay details carefully the problems they have faced, and how they have not only overcome them but used them to refine operations to squeeze far more capabilities out of the helicopter, beyond its initial design.

Saving flight time saves energy, reduces heating, and provides more freedom to use slower speeds to tiptoe around disruptive terrain that might otherwise endanger or significantly degrade the landing accuracy of the helicopter. Higher speeds and higher accelerations reduce the time needed to execute a given flight path. Higher altitudes permit higher speeds, as the wider field of view helps to keep ground features in view of Ingenuity’s navigation camera longer, counteracting the effect of increased speed. Expanding Ingenuity’s flight envelope had the potential to relax flight planning constraints and allow Ingenuity to operate more effectively alongside Perseverance.

As a result, beginning with flight 45 the team has made changes to increase flight speeds and acceleration at every point of every flight, thus allowing the helicopter to fly higher and farther with less strain.

This report however does not provide any information on Ingenuity’s last two flights, especially its 68th, which did not go as planned. The helicopter appears to be in good shape (the team has already planned the 69th flight, which was supposed to happen two days ago), but a more detailed update would be appreciated.

Glacial layers in Mars’ glacier country

Glacial layers in Mars' glacier country
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 20, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It features a 250-foot-high north-south cliff that appears to have numerous horizontal layers within it.

Moreover, both on the plateau above the cliff as well as the floor below it, the entire surface seems to resemble a thick snow/ice field, made even more evident by the distortion of many craters and the apparent glacial material inside each crater.

The layers suggest that this ice was laid down in a series of cycles. During cold periods snow fell and accumulated as ice over time. When things became warmer some of that ice sublimated away, but not all. With the next cold cycle a new layer was put down.

The many layers suggest many climate cycles on Mars, none of which were caused by SUVs or coal-firing electrical power stations.
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Ingenuity’s most recent flight, the 68th, a mystery

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

UPDATE: See this December 26, 2023 post for more accurate information.

Original post:
————————–
According to a recent update to the flight log of the Mars helicopter Ingenuity, it finally completed its 68th flight on December 15, 2023, not on December 9, 2023 as announced in the flight plan on December 8th.

More significantly, the flight only traveled 1,289 feet (393 meters), not the 2,716 feet (828 meters) intended. The flight was supposed to travel out to the northeast and then return to its take-off point, indicated by the green dot on the map above, completing a “flight test” as well as scouting the ground below. It appears it did not do this, but where the 68th flight actually went and landed has as yet not been released. According to the flight plan, Ingenuity likely landed somewhere in Neretva Vallis to the northeast, as indicated by the green line.

What we do know is that the engineering team knows enough about Ingenuity’s condition to release today the flight plan for the 69th flight, which was actually scheduled to occur yesterday. That flight plan calls for Ingenuity to travel about 2,300 feet to the east-northeast and then return to its take-off point.

Meanwhile, Perseverance (the blue dot) is working its way west back to its planned route, the red dotted line.

A land of buttes on Mars

A land of buttes on Mars
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Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on October 4, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Labeled a “terrain sample” by the science team, it was likely shot not as part of any specific research project but to fill a gap in the schedule so as to maintain the camera’s proper temperature. When the camera team has to do this they try to pick targets that are of some interest. Usually they succeed, considering the enormous gaps we presently have of Mars’ geological history.

This picture is no different. It shows a land of buttes and mesas, all ranging from 20 to 200 feet high, surrounded by canyons filled with ripple dunes of Martian dust. If you look at the floor of those canyons closely, you will notice that where there are no ripple dunes the ground is slightly higher and smooth. It is as if that ground was a kind of sandstone that was eroded away by wind into sand, which then formed the dunes.
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Another minor canyon on Mars that would be a world wonder on Earth

Another minor canyon 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 August 6, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the steep north canyon wall of one small part of the Martian canyon complex dubbed Noctis Labyrinthus

The elevation drop in this picture is about 8,000 feet, but the canyon’s lowest point is several miles further south and another 7,000 feet lower down. What is most intriguing about the geology here is its age. If you look at the full resolution image, you will see that there are scattered small craters on the smooth slopes that resemble sand that gravity and wind is shaping into those long streaks heading downhill.

Those craters, however tell us that these smooth slopes are very old, and have not changed in a long time. Furthermore, though the material appears to look like soft sand, the craters also tell us it long ago hardened into a kind of rock. If wind is shaping this material, it must be a very slow process.

The light areas on the rim as well as the ridge peaks below the rim suggest the presence of geological variety, which fits with other data that says Noctis Labyrinthus has a wide variety of minerals.
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Perseverance looks at Jezero Crater in high resolution

Perseverance's future route
Click for full image.

The Perseverance science team earlier this week released a mosaic taken by the rover’s high resolution over three days in November, showing the entire 360 degree view of Jezero Crater from where Perservance sat during the month long solar conjunction that month, when communications with Mars was cut off due to the Sun being in the way.

Part of that panorama, significantly reduced, cropped, and enhanced, is posted above, focusing on the western rim of Jezero Crater and the route that Perseverance will likely take in the future. Below is an overview map that indicates by the yellow lines the approximate area covered by this picture. The light blue dot marks Perseverance’s present location, while the dark blue dot marks where it took the mosaic and was also stationed during that solar conjunction. The dotted red line on both images marks the approximate proposed route that the science team is considering for leaving Jezero crater. Instead of going out through Neretva Vallis, they are instead considering heading south to go over the crater’s rim itself.

Ingenuity’s present position is marked by the green dot. This is where it landed after flight 67 on December 2nd. On December 8th the helicopter’s engineering team had released the flight plan for flight 68, scheduling it for December 9th, but as of this date it appears that flight has not occurred. I suspect the delay is because communication between Ingenuity and Perseverance is presently spotty, though the Ingenuity team has released no information.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

The end of a 400-mile-long Martian escarpment

The end of a 400-mile-long escarpment
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Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on August 14, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. It shows the cracked top of a enscarpment, with the bottom point to the west about 2,400 feet lower in elevation.

The north-south cracks at the top of the cliff indicate faults. They also suggest that the cliff itself its slowly separating from eastern plateau. North from this point, beyond the edge of this picture, are several places where such a separation has already occurred, with the collapsed cliff leaving a wide pile of landslide debris at the base.

This cliff actually continues north for another 400 miles, suggesting that the ground shifted along this entire distance, with the ground to the east going up and ground to the west going down. Because the cliff is such a distinct and large feature, it has its own name, Claritas Rupes, “rupes” being the Latin word for cliff.
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Martian crater or mud caldera?

Martian crater or volcano?
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Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on October 18, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The scientists only call this a “feature,” likely because they don’t wish to guess as to its nature without more data. However, the 2.5 mile wide splash apron around the central double crater certainly merits a closer look. That double crater could be from impact, but it also could be a caldera, with the apron the result of material that flowed from the caldera.

That there appear to be fewer craters on the apron than on the surrounding terrain strengthens this last hypothesis. The apron would have erased many earlier impact craters, resulting in this lower count.

The location however suggests that if this feature was volcanic in origin it might not have been spewing out magma.
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Craters in a row

Craters in a row
Click for original image.

Cool image time from Mars! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on October 13, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It highlights a string of craters, all lined up in an almost straight line.

Were these craters caused by the impact of an asteroid that broke up as it burned its way through the thin Martian atmosphere? The lack of any raised rims argues instead that these are sinks produced not from impact but from a collapse into a void below, possibly a fault line.

Yet, almost all of the craters in this image, even those not part of this crater string, show no raised rims. If sinks, the voids below don’t seem to follow any pattern, which once again argues in favor of random impacts, with the string produced by a bolide breaking up just prior to hitting the ground.
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The steep mountain slopes inside Valles Marineris

Overview map

The steep mountain slopes inside Valles Marineris
Click for full image.

Time for another cool image showing the dramatically steep terrain of Valles Marineris on Mars, the largest known canyon in the solar system. The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on October 31, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The scientists rightly label this picture “Steep Slopes in West Melas Chasma”. The red dot marks the high point on this ridgeline. The green dot at the upper left marks the lowest point in the picture, about 4,800 feet below the peak. The blue dot on the right edge marks the low point on the ridge’s eastern flank, about 4,600 feet below the peak. The cliff to the east of the peak drops quickly about 1,300 feet in less than a mile.

On the overview map above, the white dot marks the location. The inset is an oblique view, created from a global mosaic of MRO’s context camera images, with the white rectangle indicating approximately the area covered by the picture above.

The immense scale of Valles Marineris must once again be noted. The elevations in this picture are comparable to the descent you make hiking down from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. They pale however when compared to Valles Marineris. In the inset I have indicated the rim and floor of Valles Marineris in this part of the canyon. The elevation distance between the two is 18,000 feet.

In other words, the canyon to the east of this ridge is quite comparable in size to the Earth’s Grand Canyon, and it is hardly noticeable within the larger canyon of Valles Marineris.

Big Martian gullies partly filled with glacial material

Overview map

Big Martian gullies partly filled with glacial material

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 18, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists dub as “large gullies with infilled alcoves.”

Gullies on Mars were one of the first discoveries by orbiters of small-scalle potential water-caused features on the Red Planet. The favorite explanation for their formation today involves the seasonal freeze-thaw cycle, combined with the deposition of ice and dry ice frost in the winter. When that ice and dry ice sublimates away in the spring it causes collapse and erosion, widening the gullies.

These gullies also exhibit evidence that underground and glacial ice might contribute as well. The material in the largest gullies looks like a mixture of glacial material and dust and debris. It could also be that there is ice impregnated in the ground, which can cause large collapses when it sublimates away.

The white rectangle on the overview map and inset above marks the location of this picture, on the western rim of a 13-mile-wide unnamed crater inside the western portion of the 2,000-mile-long mid-latitude strip on Mars I dub glacier country, since every image from orbit shows evidence of glaciers.

This picture is no different, as the horizontal cracks at the base of the crater rim suggests the glacier that fills the crater floor is being pulled apart by gravity at its edges. The elevation drop from the top of the rim to the floor is about 3,200 feet, so any ice on that slope will definitely be stressed by gravity. Such cracks are therefore not surprising.

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter takes another look at the non-face on Mars

The non-face on Mars
Click for original image

In 2007, shortly after it began science operations in Mars orbit, the science team for Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) pointed its high resolution camera at the so-called “Face on Mars”, taking a picture that confirmed (as had Mars Global Surveyor several years earlier) that this “face” was a non-face, simply a mesa whose features made it appear roughly facelike in low resolution imagery.

Now, more than sixteen years later, scientists have used MRO to take a new picture of the non-face mesa. That picture is to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here. Compared to the 2007 photo the new photo has far better lighting conditions, revealing many details on the mesa’s eastern half that were mostly obscured by shadows previously.

In fact, these new details strongly suggest that the depression on the mesa’s eastern slopes harbors a decaying glacier. At least, that is what the features there resemble.
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Ingenuity completes its 67th flight on Mars

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Almost immediately after communications were re-established with Mars after the monthlong solar conjunction — where the Sun stood between the Earth and Mars — the Ingenuity engineering team uploaded instructions for Ingenuity’s 67th flight, and on December 2, 2023, the helicopter successfully completed that flight, traveling 1,289 feet to the west at a height of 39 feet for 136 seconds, almost exactly what the flight planned dictated.

The overview map above shows with the green dot the helicopter’s new position after that flight. It has moved ahead of Perseverance into Neretva Vallis, the gap out of Jezero Crater through which the rover will eventually travel. At the moment however Perseverance sits much farther east, as indicated by the blue dot, where it has been studying the surface geology of the delta that once flowed through that gap into the crater.

Lava-filled Martian crater

Lava-filled Martian crater
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on July 10, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the northeast corner of an unnamed 7-mile-wide crater, located near the equator in the dry Martian tropics.

The MRO science team labels this “crater and lava fill”, suggesting that the crater interior is filled with lava material. The nature of that crater floor reinforces this conclusion, as it is relatively smooth and does not have rough aspects of glacial material found in craters in the mid-latitudes. Instead, it looks like a frozen lake of lava that has the peaks of mostly buried features poking up at various spots.

What makes this crater interesting however are the gullies on the northern interior rim. Gullies on Mars are normally thought to be associated with some water-frost-ice process, probably seasonal, where the thaw-freeze cycle causes small collapses and avalanches. Yet, this crater is almost at the equator, in a very dry region where no evidence of near-surface ice is found. Gullies here suggest the hypothesis for explaining the gullies on Mars have not quite solved the mystery.
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Communications resume with Mars orbiters and rovers

It now appears that communications have resumed between Mars and the Earth, the planets having moved do that the Sun is no longer in between. From an update by the Curiosity science team today:

Mars has just emerged from its solar conjunction period, when sending commands to all Mars spacecraft was not safe for three weeks since the Red Planet was behind the Sun as seen from Earth. During that time, Curiosity followed a long plan of instructions covering Sols 4004-4022 which were uploaded to the rover during the week of October 30. The early word on is that the rover weathered the long blackout period just fine.

During the black-out the rovers had continued to upload data to the orbiters above, and some of that data was relayed back to Earth this past weekend, though the relay was “spotty” with some data packages lost.

Communications have now cleared up, and so we should expect both Curiosity and Perseverance to resume full operations again.

Thick windblown ash in Mars’ largest mountain region

Thick windblown ash near Mars' largest volcano
Click for original picture.

The cool image to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on September 1, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and shows what the scientists label as “Erosional Features on Olympus Mons.”

What is eroding? Based on the picture itself the first guess is volcanic ash, as these features strongly resemble the many features seen in the Medusae Fossae Formation, the largest volcanic ash field on Mars — about the size of the subcontinent of India.

Medusae however is many thousand miles away, and is not apparently related to any specific volcano. These features are instead directly linked to Olympus Mons, the largest known volcano in the solar system. However, much of the terrain for many hundreds of miles around Olympus is covered with flood lava, which was deposited and hardened quickly to form smooth featureless plains that have resisted much erosion over the eons. Here the terrain is clearly eroded, which suggests that if the material here is volcanic, it was laid down not by flood lava but by falling ash that got compressed but was easily friable and could be blown away by the winds of Mars’ thin atmosphere.
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Mars’ giant sinkholes

The floor of one of Mars' giant sinkholes

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 27, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a small section of the floor and northern slope of Hebes Chasma, one of the many very large enclosed pits that can be found to the north of Valles Marineris, the largest canyon in the solar system. Though Hebes seems small next to the 1,500 mile long Valles Marineris, it still is 200 miles long by 80 miles wide, and could easily fit a half dozen Grand Canyons within it.

For example, the Grand Canyon is from 4,420 to 5,400 feet deep, hiking down from the south and north rim lodges respectively, which sit about ten miles apart. On this picture, the peak on the right sits about 5,300 feet above and only about 3.8 miles from the low spot on the bottom left, which means this one small picture encapsulates the Grand Canyon. And yet, the northern rim of Hebes sits another 21,000 feet higher and twelve miles away. And the entire chasma itself extends 50 miles to the west, 150 miles to the east, and 50 miles to the south.
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Striped terrain on Mars

Overview map

Striped terrain on Mars
Click for original image.

Today’s cool image will be a mystery with the answer below the fold. Before you look at the answer, however, you must try to come up with your own explanation for the picture to the right, cropped to post here, that was taken on September 25, 2018 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

What we see in this picture is what looks like a striped terrain, alternating bands of light and dark. What caused the bands? Why the different colors?

The overview map above provides some clues. The white rectangle inside Juventae Chasma near the map’s center marks the area within which this picture was taken, though the picture to the right covers only about a pixel inside that rectangle.

Can you guess what these stripes reveal, from this little information? For this quiz to work you must make a guess, but be prepared to be wrong and quickly reassess your conclusions. Such is the real scientific method, so rarely taught now in schools.
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Martian ice sheets sublimating like peeling paint?

Overview map

Martian ice sheets resembling paint peeling
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on September 19, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The features are described as “ribbed terrain” in the label. To my eye they more resemble flakes of peeling paint, most especially the mesas in the lower left. On the full image there are many more examples that resemble old paint peels, barely attached to the wall.

The white dot on the overview map above marks the location, deep inside the 2,000-mile-long strip in the northern mid-latitudes I dub glacier country, because everything seems covered by glacial features. This location is at 42 degrees north latitude, where plenty of near-surface ice features are found on Mars.

At first glance it looks like the top “paint-peel” layers to the south have been slowly sublimating away, leaving behind the smooth plain to the north. The problem is that this smooth area in the full image actually appears to be a glacial ice sheet of its own, filling all the low areas between mesas.

In other words, we are probably looking at layers and layers of ice sheets, each created during a different Martian climate cycle, caused by the wide swings of the planet’s rotational tilt, or obliquity.

The location is within Arabia Terra, the largest transitional zone on Mars between the northern lowland plains and the southern cratered highlands. Thus it sits above the glaciers that fill the lower regions of chaos to the north. What we have here is terrain that will eventually become chaos terrain, as the narrow faults and cracks are slowly widened into canyons by the cycles of glacial activity.

Ancient volcanic vent on Mars

Volcanic vent 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 May 28, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The picture label describes it as a “Low Shield Vent and Pit Northeast of Arsia Mons,” suggesting these depressions are volcanic in nature. We know the pit in the lower left is not an impact crater because it has no raised rim of ejecta. Instead, it looks like a collapsed sinkhole, formed when the ceiling above a void could no longer support its weight. Similar, the trench to the northeast is aligned with the downhill grade to the northeast, with its features suggesting a vent draining in that direction.

The ample dust inside the trench and pit suggest that it has been a very long time since this vent was active. Research suggests volcanic activity last occurred in this region from 10 to 300 million years ago, so that gives us a rough estimate of this vent’s age. Since then any dust that is blown into it will tend to become trapped there.
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The southernmost extent of Mars’ youngest lava flood event

The southernmost edge of Mars' youngest lava event
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 24, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

Labeled “flow margin in Elysium Planitia,” it shows the very edge of what scientists believe was the most recent large lava event on Mars, dubbed the Athabasca Valles, that is thought to have occurred only 600 million years ago. In only a matter of weeks the fast flowing lava covered a region about the size of Great Britain. What we see here is the southernmost edge of that flow, with the smooth terrain on the west an older lava flood plain, covered by the new flood lava from Athabasca on the east.

The polygon cracks likely indicate cracks that formed during the hardening process (like the polygon cracks in drying mud). Hot lava then pushed up from below to form the ridges. It is also possible the ridges are what scientists call “wrinkle ridges,” formed when material shrinks during the drying process.
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