China resumes communications with Zhurong Mars rover

Elevation map of Zhurong location
Click for full image.

The new colonial movement: China yesterday announced that it has regained communications with its Zhurong rover, located in the Martian northern lowland plains of Utopia Planitia.

The image to the right, cropped and annotated by me to post here, is a digital terrain map created from two high resolution photos taken by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The black line shows the route Zhurong has traveled since landing in May.

According to [Chen Baichao, the chief designer of Zhurong], the rover has traveled more than 1,000 meters since it landed on Mars at the southern part of Utopia Planitia in May 2021. After the solar conjunction, it will head south to find mud volcanoes, which scientists are interested in, located about 10 km away.

American scientists had hoped Zhurong would head north to a much larger mud cone that was much closer. Their decision to head south to the smaller cones farther away tells us that they have given themselves a much more challenging mission. It also suggests they decided it will be easier to get Zhurong closer to a smaller cone.

Based on that 10 kilometer distance, it seems the Chinese are aiming for the cones near the bottom of the map. It took Zhurong three months to travel the distance shown. At that pace, to get to those small southern mud cones will likely take, at a minimum, about fifteen months. Though the ground is quite flat, the rover will either have to negotiate one small rise of about 15 feet, or detour to the east somewhat to find a less steep route.

It is also possible that they will instead head to the mud cone south of the large impact crater. It is also a small cone, is much nearer, and will not require them to get past that rise.

Layered glaciers in Mars’ glacier country

Layered glacier in Mars' glacier country
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Cool image time. The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on August 30, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows two different impact craters in a glacial region dubbed Nilosyrtis Mensae, located in the northern mid-latitudes in the 2,000 mile long strip chaos terrain that I have labeled glacier country because practically every image finds them there.

The splash apron surrounding the larger crater is typical of craters in Martian regions where ice is thought to be near the surface.

What makes this picture interesting is that the glaciers appear layered. You can see evidence of this in the mounds inside both craters. Those mounds appear to represent earlier periods when there was more ice here. Since then the mounds have partly sublimated away.

You can also see evidence of layers in the material surrounding the nearby larger mounds.

The map below shows us where this image is, relative to all of glacier country as well as the rover Perseverance in Jezero Crater.
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China resumes communications with Tianwen-1 Mars orbiter

With the Sun no longer between the Earth and Mars, China has re-established communications with its Tianwen-1 Mars orbiter.

According to the CNSA [China National Space Administration], the orbiter will enter the remote-sensing orbit of Mars in early November to carry out global detection and obtain scientific data such as morphology and geological structure, surface material composition and soil type distribution, atmospheric ionosphere, and space environment of Mars.

The orbiter will also relay the communication between the rover and Earth for the rover’s extended mission, the CNSA added.

Based on this information, full communications with the rover Zhurong will not resume until November because the orbiter needs to re-adjust its orbit.

Curiosity’s new mountain views

Curiosity's future route
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With the resumption of communications with Mars, following the two week hiatus because the Sun was in the way, Curiosity is about to begin its travels again. The view above, taken by the right navigation camera and reduced and annotated to post here, looks forward, with the red dotted line indicating the planned route.

The distinct white outcrop on the right top is the same spectacular outcrop I have highlighted previously.

At the moment however the rover is not going anywhere. Just before the hiatus the scientists had Curiosity move a short distance to crush some nearby nodules so that they could see their interior. At their update they post an image of one crushed nodule, and write the following:

[L]ook closely for very straight imprinted lines in the middle of flattened areas that appear slightly more grey. You can also see cracks, especially clearly on the right of the nodule in the image, but if you look around, you’ll find there are more of them. Some of the scratched areas are looking white, too. All those features will allow us an insight into the nodules and an interpretation beyond what we can otherwise see on the surface.

The image below, also taken by the right navigation camera and reduced to post here, looks back at Curiosity’s earlier travels, across the floor of Gale Crater about 1,500 feet below. The rim, about 25 miles away, can be seen through the atmospheric haze as the distant mountain chain.

See the orbital map at this post in September to get the context of what the two images are viewing. The top image looks south along the cliff line, the bottom looks almost due north.
Looking across Gale Crater
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A collapsing north wall in Valles Marineris

Mass wasting in Valles Marineris
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Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on July 17, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label as an alluvial fan.

I have also seen them label this kind of avalanche as mass wasting, where the material moves down slope suddenly in a single mass.

The image shows the aftermath of such an event, after a large blob of material broke free from the mountainside and slid almost as a unit downhill to settle more than two miles away on the floor of the canyon. The distance traveled and the blobby nature of the flow both reveal how the lower Martian gravity changes the nature of such events, compared to what you might see on Earth. The flows can travel farther, and can hold together as a unit easier.

The overview map below not only provides the context, but it tells us that such events are remarkably common in this place.
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Scientists resume communications with U.S. Martian rovers

Example of first rover images downloaded following communications break
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Both U.S. Mars rovers Curiosity and Perseverance have resumed communications with Earth, each downloading a bunch of images that they had been programmed to take during the two week communications hiatus from October 3 to October 17, caused by the Sun being between the Earth and Mars.

Most of the images are a variation of the one to the right, reduced to post here, taken by Curiosity’s left hazard avoidance camera. As neither rover moved during the communications break, the scientists limited most photography to only a handful of cameras, with the photographs mostly confirming day to day that the rover and its instruments were functioning.

You can see all of Curiosity’s new images here. Perseverance’s new images can be viewed here. (To see the new Perseverance images click on “latest images.”)

A Curiosity team update today notes the work they plan to do in the coming days as they gear up for future travels. The Perseverance update today focused more on the paper published during the break that confirmed, using data from the rover, that Jezero Crater once contained a lake.

The icy Phlegra Mountains on Mars

Overview map

Cool image time! The Phlegra Mountains on Mars are probably the iciest mountains on the red planet, something I noted previously in an April 2020 essay, highlighting a half dozen images from the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) that showed that iciness. As I stated:

Here practically every photograph taken by any orbiter appears to show immense glacial flows of some kind, with some glaciers coming down canyons and hollows [#1], some filling craters [#2], some forming wide aprons [#3] at the base of mountains and even at the mountains’ highest peaks [#4], and some filling the flats [#5] beyond the mountain foothills.

And then there are the images that show almost all these types of glaciers, plus others [#6].

The overview map above not only shows the locations of these six images in black, it also shows in red two of SpaceX’s four prime candidate landing sites for its Starship spacecraft. Note that #3 above is one of those sites.

The white rectangle in the Phlegra Mountains marks the location of today’s cool image below, taken on June 11, 2021 by MRO’S high resolution camera.
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Dry Martian chaos

Dry chaos on Mars
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On Mars, one of the most common kinds of landscape is called chaos terrain. Made up of mesas, buttes, and cross-cutting random canyons, this geology is not seen on Earth, and when first identified by scientists in early orbital pictures in the 1970s, it baffled them. While it is clear that some form of erosion process caused it, the scientists did not have enough data then to figure out what that process was.

Today scientists have a rough theory, based on what they now know about Mars’ overall geology and its climate and orbital history. The canyons of chaos terrain were originally fault lines where either water or ice could seep through and widen. See this January 2020 post for a more detailed explanation.

Most of the cool images I have posted of chaos terrain have been in places in the mid-latitudes that are covered with glaciers. See for example this December 2019 post of one particular mesa in glacier country, with numerous glaciers flowing down its slopes on all sides. That mesa is quite typical of all such mesas in the mid-latitudes.

Today’s cool image above, cropped to post here, takes us instead to the Martian very dry equatorial regions. The photo was taken on May 17, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and like mid-latitude chaos, it shows a collection of random mesas with canyons cut almost randomly between.

Unlike the mid-latitudes, however, there is no evidence of glaciers here. Instead, the canyons and mesa slopes are covered with dust, shaped into wind-blown dunes.

As always, the overview map below gives us some context.
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A gecko on Mars

Gecko on Mars
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Today’s cool image is also today’s picture of the day from the science team of the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO. That picture, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, can be seen to the right. As the caption authors Sharon Wilson and Sarah Sutton write:

The smooth volcanic surfaces in the Gordii Fossae region are sometimes interrupted by long, narrow troughs, or fissures. These fissures form when underground faults, possibly involving magma movement, reach the near-surface, allowing material to collapse into pits or an elongated trough. This fissure appears to have erupted material that flowed onto the surface.

If you use your imagination, this trough resembles a gecko with its long tail and web-shaped feet!

This impression is even more evident in the wider image taken by MRO’s context camera below.
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Dusty chaos in Martian canyons

Outcrops in dusty chaos on Mars
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Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on May 30, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the dusty dry floor of the chaos region of rough terrain in a side canyon of Valles Marineris, near its outlet. The color strip and the bright outcrops suggest that this terrain contains interesting minerals and resources. To determine exactly what those materials are however requires more information not available in this photo.

This ancient chaos terrain is the leftover eroded sea floor of a intermittent inland sea, leftover water from the catastrophic floods that are theorized to have flowed out of Valles Marineris and carved its gigantic canyons.

The overview map below shows this hypothesized sea.
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Ancient fossil river in the very dry equatorial regions of Mars

Inverted Channel on Mars
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Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on August 29, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label an “inverted channel in Arabia Terra,” a small example of the more than 10,000 miles of fossilized rivers in this region on Mars that scientists have identified using MRO.

They are made of sand and gravel deposited by a river and when the river becomes dry, the channels are left upstanding as the surrounding material erodes. On Earth, inverted channels often occur in dry, desert environments like Oman, Egypt, or Utah, where erosion rates are low – in most other environments, the channels are worn away before they can become inverted. “The networks of inverted channels in Arabia Terra are about 30m high and up to 1–2km wide, so we think they are probably the remains of giant rivers that flowed billions of years ago. [emphasis mine]

Since this fossilized river is located at 11 degrees north latitude, smack in the middle of the dry equatorial regions of Mars, it has certainly been a dry desert for a very long time. You can see how barren the terrain appears by looking at the wider view afforded by MRO’s context camera below.
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Data from Perseverance confirms Jezero Crater once held a lake

figure 5 from paper showing ancient lake in Jezero Crater

According to a newly published paper, the data obtained by the rover Perseverance has confirmed and refined what orbital data has suggested, that Jezero Crater once held a lake. From the abstract:

We analyze images taken by the rover in the three months after landing. The fan has outcrop faces that were invisible from orbit, which record the hydrological evolution of Jezero crater. We interpret the presence of inclined strata in these outcrops as evidence of deltas that advanced into a lake. In contrast, the uppermost fan strata are composed of boulder conglomerates, which imply deposition by episodic high-energy floods. This sedimentary succession indicates a transition, from a sustained hydrologic activity in a persistent lake environment, to highly energetic short-duration fluvial flows.

In other words, the crater first held a lake, which as it slowly dried out was periodically renewed by flash floods. The distinct delta of material that made Jezero Crater the prime landing site was apparently formed during the period when the lake existed. The conditions that caused the subsequent flash floods is as yet not been determined, though it likely is related to the red planet’s long term evolution.

The image above, figure 5 from the paper, shows the inferred lake in that early history. The red cross marks Perseverance’s landing site.

This data reinforces the fundamental scientific mystery of Mars. It shows evidence that liquid water once flowed on the surface of Mars, even though other long term data of the planet’s history says the Martian atmosphere has been too thin and too cold to allow that to happen. There is evidence that the atmosphere might have once been thicker, but no computer model or theory has been able to produce a time when it was warm enough.

Report: Reduce contamination restrictions for some future Mars missions

A new policy paper from the National Academies has proposed reducing the planetary protection rules for some future Mars missions, concluding that Earth life cannot survive on Mars for long, and as long as a lander or rover does not land close to cave entrances or on extensive ice, the need to decontaminate is significantly reduced. From the press release:

In this report, the Committee focused on regions on Mars that might not be negatively impacted if visited by spacecraft that are not stringently sterilized. For missions that do not access the subsurface, such regions could include a significant portion of the surface of Mars, because the UV environment is so biocidal that terrestrial organisms are, in most cases, not likely to survive more than one to two sols, or Martian days. For missions that access the subsurface (down to 1 meter), regions on Mars expected to have patchy or no water ice below the surface might also be visited by spacecraft more relaxed bioburden requirements, because such patchy ice is likely not conducive to the proliferation of terrestrial microorganisms.

The report finds that it is imperative that any mission sent to Mars with reduced bioburden requirements remain some conservative distance from any subsurface access points, such as cave openings. Furthermore, though less stringent than current requirements, these missions with relaxed bioburden requirements would still need some level of cleanliness, which could be achieved for instance using standard aerospace cleanliness practices.

The report essentially concluded that missions to Mars’ dry equatorial regions as well as its glacial mid-latitudes pose no risk to contaminating the red planet with Earth life.

While the press release pushes the idea that this is a reduction in the planetary protection rules, it could be seen in a much worse light. Based on the proposed rules, missions to the Martian poles or higher latitudes, where ice is extensive and not “patchy,” might be entirely forbidden. This will significantly limit Martian exploration by the United States. Meanwhile, China and Russia and others will be faced with no such restrictions.

Note too that this report likely forbids SpaceX from landing its Starship in the company’s candidate landing sites, all of which are in the northern lowland plains ranging from 35 to 40 degrees north latitude. This region is thought to have extensive ice sheets very close to the surface. To land there, the rules proposed will either require extremely strict and very costly decontamination procedures, many of which do not even exist as yet, or will forbid landing there at all.

The wavy and beautiful edge of the northern ice cap of Mars

The scarp of the north pole icecap on Mars
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Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on August 7, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the many layered scarp that forms the edge of the northern polar ice cap on Mars, probably more than 2,000 feet high.

Those layers are significant, as they indicate the many climate cycles that scientists think Mars has undergone over the eons as the red planet’s rotational tilt, or obliquity, rocked back and forth from 11 degrees inclination to as much as 60 degrees. At the extremes, the ice cap was either growing or shrinking, while today (at 25 degrees inclination) it appears to be in a steady state.

Why the layers alternate light and dark is not known. The shift from lighter colors at the top half and the dark bottom half marks the separation between the top water ice cap and what scientists label the basal unit. It also marks some major change in Mars’ climate and geology that occurred about 4.5 million years ago.
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Land of Martian slope streaks

Land of Martian slope streaks
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Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on May 21, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a typical example of the many slope streaks found in the rough and very broken region north of the Martian volcano Olympus Mons, the largest in the solar system.

See this May 2019 post for a detailed explanation of slope streaks. While they appear to be avalanches, they do not change the topography of the ground, sometimes flow over rises, and appear to be a phenomenon entirely unique to Mars. While no theory as yet explains them fully, the two most favored postulate that they are either dust avalanches or the percolation of a brine of chloride and/or perchlorate in a thin layer several inches thick close to the surface. In both cases the streak is mostly only a stain on the surface that fades with time.

The location of this cool image however tells us something more about them.
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Inactive volcano vent on Mars

Inactive volcanic vent on Mars
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Overview map

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped, reduced and annotated to post here, was taken on July 30, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The left image shows a pit that the scientists label a “vent” near the giant volcano Pavonis Mons. The right image is identical, except that I have brightened it considerably to bring out the details in the shadowed area.

As you can see, this pit is filled, and does not appear to have any existing openings into more extensive underground passages.

The white dot on the overview map on the right shows this vent’s location, to the south of Pavonis Mons, and in line with the giant crack that splits three of Mars’ four largest volcanoes. The vent is even aligned the same as that crack, from the northeast to the southwest. The black dots mark the locations of the many cave pits found in this region.

Was this a volcanic vent? If you look at the full image you will see that this pit aligns with a shallower pit to the southwest, with a depression linking the two. Visually this suggests this is a faultline which in turn makes for a good outlet point for lava flow.

Though the data suggests this is a volcanic vent, that supposition is as yet unproven. The full image does not show much evidence of a flow from the pit, which suggests instead that we are merely looking at a spot where the ground cracked along fault lines.

Ingenuity’s 14th flight scrubbed by helicopter

Though Ingenuity successfully completed a preflight high speed test of its rotors on September 15th, when it came time to do its fourteenth flight two days later, intended as a short airborne test of that high speed, the helicopter’s computer sensed an issue prior to take-off and scrubbed the flight.

The goal of the high speed test and short flight were to see if Ingenuity could fly during the winter months when the atmosphere of Mars is thinner, thus requiring a higher rotor speed. Initially it was not expected the helicopter would still be operational at this point, so this is another example of it pushing its expected capabilities. The scrub however might be signalling the end date for Ingenuity, related to servo motors that help control the helicpoter:

Ingenuity performs an automated check on the servos before every flight. This self-test drives the six servos through a sequence of steps over their range of motion and verifies that they reach their commanded positions after each step. We affectionately refer to the Ingenuity servo self-test as the “servo wiggle.”

The data from the anomalous pre-flight servo wiggle shows that two of the upper rotor swashplate servos – servos 1 and 2 – began to oscillate with an amplitude of approximately 1 degree about their commanded positions just after the second step of the sequence. Ingenuity’s software detected this oscillation and promptly canceled the self-test and flight.

Our team is still looking into the anomaly. To gather more data, we had Ingenuity execute additional servo wiggle tests during the past week, with one wiggle test on Sept. 21, 2021 (Sol 209) and one on Sept. 23, 2021 (Sol 211). Both of the wiggle tests ran successfully, so the issue isn’t entirely repeatable.

One theory for what’s happening is that moving parts in the servo gearboxes and swashplate linkages are beginning to show some wear now that Ingenuity has flown well over twice as many flights as originally planned (13 completed versus five planned). Wear in these moving parts would cause increased clearances and increased looseness, and could explain servo oscillation. Another theory is that the high-speed spin test left the upper rotor at a position that loads servos 1 and 2 in a unique, oscillation-inducing way that we haven’t encountered before.

Because communications with Mars are now paused for two weeks because the Sun is in the way, the engineering team is holding off further tests until communications resume.

A Mars mesa carved by floods and lava?

Overview map of Kasei Valles

With today’s cool image we once again start our journey from afar, and zoom in. The overview map to the right focuses in on the thousand-mile-long Kasei Valley on Mars.

The blue area is where scientists postulate a lake once existed, held there by an ice dam (indicated by the white line). At some point that ice dam burst, releasing the water in a catastrophic flood that created the braided flow features that continue down Kasei Valles to the northern lowland plain of Chryse Planitia.

The black area marks a giant lava flow that scientists believe came later, following the already carved stream channels for a distance of 1,000 miles, traveling at speeds of 10 to 45 miles per hour.

The red dot near the Kasei Valles resurgence is today’s cool image.
» Read more

Flooding from crater lakes on Mars

Loire Valley on Mars

According to a new paper published today, scientists estimate that flooding from crater lakes on Mars — caused by sudden breaches in the crater rims — could have created as much as 25% of the volume of the valley networks that have been identified there.

Mars’ surface hosted large lakes about 3.5 billion years ago. Some of these lakes overtopped their rims, resulting in massive floods that rapidly formed deep canyons. Similar lake breach floods occurred in the northwest United States and central Asia at the end of the last glacial period over 15,000 years ago.

“We found that at least a quarter of the total eroded volume of Martian valley networks were carved by lake breach floods. This high number is particularly striking considering that valleys formed by lake breach floods make up just 3% of Mars’ total valley length,” Morgan said. “This discrepancy is accounted for by the fact that outlet canyons are significantly deeper than other valleys. These floods would have shaped the overall Martian topography, affecting the flow paths of other valleys. Our results don’t negate the importance of precipitation-fed runoff on early Mars. On the contrary, liquid water had to be stable for long enough for lakes to fill from inlet rivers.” [emphasis mine]

The map above shows in white the Loire Valles on Mars, located at about 20 degrees south latitude in transition zone between the northern lowland plains and southern cratered highlands. The paper cites this valley as a typical example of a flood valley caused by a crater rim breach.

This research only makes the geological and climate history of Mars more puzzling. Though the geological evidence strongly suggests lakes and liquid water once existed on Mars, and this research strengthens that conclusion (as indicated by the highlighted sentence above), no model of the planet’s climate has ever satisfactorily created a situation where that was possible. Either there are factors about Mars’ ancient history we have not yet identified (likely) and don’t yet understand (very likely), or the planet’s geology was formed by processes alien to Earth and thus not yet recognized by us.

Perseverance as seen from orbit

Perseverance as seen from orbit
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Overview map
Click for interactive map.

The science team for the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) have snapped a picture of Perseverance at its present location in Jezero Crater.

The first image to the right, cropped to post here, shows the rover as a white dot to the right of the two long sand dunes. If you look close image, you can see the rover’s tracks near the bottom of the image.

Ingenuity is likely also in the full image, but is likely too small for MRO’s high resolution camera to pick out.

The second image is a overview map. The green dot marks the rover’s position, with the red dot Ingenuity’s present position. The dotted white line shows the route the rover has taken so far. The light brown line indicates the flight paths for all of Ingenuity’s flights. The yellow dotted line indicates the future planned route of Perseverance.

With Mars about to slip behind the Sun, communications with both rovers, Perseverance and Curiosity, as well as all the orbiters, will shortly go silent for about two weeks.

When that pause ends, the question will be where Perseverance goes next. The original plan was to retreat back along its previous path, going to the southeast before heading north past the landing site. I strongly suspect that they will instead head directly to the landing site, going to the northeast across the rough terrain, both to see something new as well as further test the rover’s ability to travel tougher ground.

They avoided that area initially because they were still in the rover’s check out period. Now that they know it works, there is no reason to avoid that ground, especially because it will be ground they have not viewed before. They could even use Ingenuity to scout it out more thoroughly.

Rivulets in Martian lava

Overview map

Today’s cool image is another example of scientists finding cool things hidden within distant pictures. The small white rectangle on the overview map to the right shows us where we are heading, to the severely eroded lava plains to the southwest of Mars’ largest volcano, Olympus Mons.

The white spot is about 500 miles from the caldera of Olympus Mons. In elevation it sits about 58,000 feet below that caldera, more than twice the height of Mt. Everest. Yet, despite these great distances, the material at that white rectangle was almost certainly laid down during an eruption from Olympus Mons, thus illustrating the gigantic scale of volcanic events on Mars. Because of the red planet’s light gravity, about 38% of Earth’s, not only can lava flow farther, it does so much faster.

The second image below is a wide angle photo taken by the context camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) in January, 2012, rotated, cropped, expanded, and enhanced to post here.
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Glaciers in the Martian south latitudes

Glaciers in Mars' southern hemisphere
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Most of the glacier cool images I have posted in the past few years from the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) have shown the obvious glacial features found in the northern hemisphere in that 2,000 mile long strip of chaos terrain at about 40 degrees latitude I dub “Glacier Country.”

Today’s glacier image to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, takes us instead to the southern hemisphere, into Hellas Basin, the death valley of Mars. The picture was taken on April 8, 2021, and in the full picture gives us a myriad of examples of glacial features. The section featured to the right focuses in on what appears to be an ice covered south facing slope, which in the southern hemisphere will get the least sunlight.

Think of the last bits of snow that refuse to melt after a big blizzard. They are always found in shadowed areas, which in the southern hemisphere would be this south-facing slope.

The overview map below shows how this location, marked by the small white rectangle, is inside Hellas Basin, at a low altitude comparable to the northern lowland plains. The feature is also a comparable latitude, 43 degrees south, to the glacier country of the north.
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InSight detects the three more large quakes on Mars, the most powerful measured so far

In the past month InSight’s seismometer has detected the three most powerful earthquakes so far measured on Mars, with one located in a region where no quakes had as yet been seen.

InSight spotted 4.2- and 4.1-magnitude temblors on Aug. 25, then picked up another roughly 4.2-magnitude quake on Sept. 18 that lasted for nearly 90 minutes, NASA officials announced on Wednesday (Sept. 22).

The previous record holder, which InSight measured in 2019, clocked in at magnitude 3.7 — about five times less powerful than a 4.2-magnitude quake.

At this time scientists have only been able to roughly pinpoint the location of the two August quakes, with the 4.1 quake occurring about 575 miles away, putting it in the volcanic plains where InSight sits and closer than the location of most of the previous large quakes near the long surface fissures dubbed Cerberus Fossae 1,000 miles away.

The August 4.2 quake’s is even more interesting, as its location is the farthest away of any so far detected, at an estimated distance of 5,280 miles away. The scientists presently suspect but have not yet confirmed that it may be located in the western end of Valles Marineris, Mars’ largest canyon.

The lander itself continues to fight a loss of power due to the amount of dust on its solar panels, forcing the science team to shut down practically all its other instruments so that the seismometer could continue operating.

A clue to the Martian history of volcanic eruptions

Dark layers in Medusae Fossae Formation
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Anyone who has taken even a single glance at a map of Mars cannot help but recognize that the red planet was once engulfed with repeated gigantic volcanic eruptions able to build numerous volcanoes larger than anything seen anywhere else in the solar system.

The cool image to the right, rotated, cropped, and enlarged to post here, provides a clue into those past eruptions, now thought to have been active for more than several billion years, with the most recent large activity ending several tens of millions of years ago. The photo was taken on May 7, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and shows just one tiny portion of the vast Medusae Fossae Formation, the largest thick volcanic ash deposit on Mars, about the size of India and what scientists think is the source of most of the planet’s dust.

What makes this picture interesting are the dark layers in the lower hollows. They indicate that this deposit was placed down in multiple eruptions, some of which produced material that appears dark blue in MRO images, and suggest that eruption was different than previous and subsequent eruptions.

The white cross on the overview map below notes the location of this picture in the Medusae Fossae Formation.
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Martian mountaintop

Mountains on Mars
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The outcrop top
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Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on September 21, 2021 by Curiosity’s high resolution mast camera, and shows the top of that spectacular rock outcrop about 200 feet to the west of where the rover presently sits. The top image, from my September 16, 2021 post, “Curiosity: Into the Mountains!”, indicates the location of the photo with the black rectangle. The red dotted line indicates the rover’s future planned route.

I estimate the whole outcrop is about 100 feet high, which means the cliff section seen in the photo to the right is probably about 30 feet high. It would make a great challenge for any number of rock climbers I know.

What makes this image especially striking are the overhanging rocks at the peak’s top. In the Martian gravity, about one third that of Earth’s, it is possible for much more delicate rock shapes to remain structurally stable, and the sharp jagged boulders hanging out at the top of this cliff demonstrate that in a quite breath-taking way. On Earth such delicate rocks would likely have quickly fallen.

The Curiosity science team is obviously most interested in the massive layers revealed by this cliff. I am also sure they are also as enthralled by the scenery as I am.

How to discover interesting things on Mars

Overview map

Today’s cool image will do something a little different. We are going to begin in orbit, and by step-by-step zooming in we will hopefully illustrate the great challenge of finding cool geological features on the surface of Mars.

The first image to the right is an overview map of the Valles Marineris region. To its east, centered at the white dot, is a vast region of chaos terrain, endless small buttes and mesas and criss-crossing canyons. Travel in this region will always be difficult, and will likely always require some form of helicopter to get from point to point.

What is hidden in that terrain? Well, to find out you need to take a global survey from orbit with a good enough resolution to reveal some details. Below is a mosaic made from two wide angle context camera pictures taken by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

Context mosaic of chaos terrain
For full images go here and here.

This mosaic, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, only captures a small section of the long north-south strips taken by MRO. The orbiter has taken tens of thousands of these strips, in its effort to produce a global map of Mars that shows some reasonable detail.

Do you see anything in this mosaic that looks interesting? Scientists need to pore over such images, one by one, searching for geology that is both puzzling and revealing. Sometimes the features are obvious, such as a single blobby crater in the flat relatively featureless northern lowlands.

Sometimes however the search can be slow and time-consuming because the terrain is complex, as is the example to the right. The many mesas and canyons can hide many interesting features. Since MRO can’t possibly take high resolution photos of everything, scientists have to pick and choose.

The planetary scientists who use MRO did find something here worth looking at in high resolution. Can you find it? Normally I’d provide a box to indicate it, but this time I’d thought I’d challenge my readers. Before you click below to see the feature, see if you can find it yourself in this mosaic. What would you want to photograph in high resolution?
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Glacial falls on Mars

A glacial falls on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on July 2, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It provides us just one more clear example of the many glaciers found in that 2,000-mile-long strip of chaos terrain at 30 to 47 degrees north latitude that runs between the northern lowland plains and the southern cratered highlands, a region I like to call Mars’ glacier country.

What makes this glacial feature interesting is that these ice-filled alcoves are south-facing, which in the northern hemisphere means they get the most sunlight. Yet, the ice here remains, well-protected by its layer of dust and debris. Think of the dirty ice slush that manages to survive the longest on city streets in the spring. The dirt acts as protection so that the ice takes more time to melt.

The overview map as always provides our context.
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Badlands on the floor of a Martian crater

Badlands on the floor of a Martian crater
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Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, shows one small section of a 30-mile-wide unnamed crater in the cratered equatorial regions of Mars northeast of Hellas Basin. Taken on July 21, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), the science team labeled merely as “Rocky crater fill.”

Being at 17 degrees south latitude, there shouldn’t be any ice features in this crater, and the high resolution image to the right seems to confirm this. All we see is an endless plain made up of innumerable small sharp rock ridges interspersed with small low areas filled with sand dunes. This is bed rock, and if its strange stucco-like appearance was caused by a past glacial era, that era is long gone.

Below is a mosaic showing the entire crater, created from two MRO context camera images.
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Curiosity: Into the mountains!

Curiosity's path into the mountains
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Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Time for another cool image from Curiosity. The photo above was taken by one of the rover’s navigation cameras today, and looks south in the direction of Curiosity’s future travels. The red dotted line shows that planned route, along the cliff face to then turn west into what the science team has dubbed Maria Gordon Notch, in honor of a Scottish scientist from the early 20th century.

The map to the right gives the context as seen from above, as well as the planned travels beyond the notch. The white dotted route marks Curiosity’s actual travel route. The red dotted line marks the planned route. The yellow lines the area seen in the above picture.

At present Curiosity is paused as it performs a new drilling campaign about 200 feet from the base of that cliff face, drilling the rover’s 33rd hole on Mars.

The outcrop resembling a ship’s prow on the image’s right, which I still consider the most spectacular rock outcrop seen yet on any planetary mission anywhere, is about 100 feet high.

Lozenge-shaped hole in Martian crater

Hole in crater floor
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Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on June 7, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The left image shows what the scientists have dubbed a “lozenge-shaped depression” in the middle of an unnamed 60-mile-wide crater in the southern cratered highlands of Mars. The right image shows the same exact depression, but I have brightened the photo in order to see the details in the shadowed depression.

Though the image is inconclusive, the bottom of the darkest spot in that depression cannot be seen, suggesting it could be an entrance into a larger void below.

Even if there is no voids below, why is this depression here? What caused it? The wider view of MRO’s context camera below might give us a hint.
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