Tag: Mars

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Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on October 6, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and shows a spot on Mars where lava was squeezed between and around some small peaks as it flowed quickly south, flooding all the low areas in this landscape.

The science team describes the features in the full image as “streamlined”, a description that is literally accurate. As this “stream” of lava rushed past, it “lined” the higher terrain, carving it into tear-dropped shapes.

In the color strip, note the blueish spots at the northern base of the 400-foot-high hill. According to the science team’s explanation [pdf] of the colors in MRO images, “Frost and ice are also relatively blue, but bright, and often concentrated at the poles or on pole-facing slopes.” The picture was taken in summer, so if these bright spots are frost or ice, it suggests they are well shaded from sunlight in those north-facing alcoves. This location is only 9 degrees north of the equator, so finding any near surface ice here is highly unlikely. That frost might exist however is intriguing, to say the least.
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Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on December 23, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The image shows us the north interior rim of 7-mile-wide Niquero Crater on Mars. From the high to the low points the elevation difference is about 2,500 feet, with a steep downhill slope averaging about 18 degrees. The terrain appears to show several avalanche collapses that pushed lower material out of the way, though at the bottom where that material has been pushed aside there is no obvious large debris pile.

The science team labels this image simply “volatiles and gullies”, a label that carries a host of significant information. These gullies, which were among the earliest found by Mars Global Surveyor in the late 1990s, were the first evidence that the surface of Mars had a lot of near surface ice. It is for this reason that this relatively small crater on Mars has a name. Most craters this small remain unnamed, but the gullies on Niquero’s north slopes required more study, and thus the crater was given a name.

Subsequent orbital imagery has now shown that craters like Niquero, located in latitudes higher than 30 degrees, quite often are filled with glacial debris. In fact, the material that these avalanches pushed aside at the base of the slope is that glacial material, protected by a thin layer of dust and debris. The avalanche essentially disturbed that protected layer, and thus the debris pile (made up mostly of ice) sublimated away when warmed by sunlight. Thus. no big debris pile.

The gullies tend to be on the pole-facing slopes. Scientists believe they are the remnant evidence of ancient glaciers that grew on these slopes because they were protected from sunlight. In subsequent eons, when the climate on Mars changed, those glaciers collapsed, leaving behind the gullies we see now.
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Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and enhanced to post here, was taken on October 9, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and shows what appear to be the somewhat typical terrain at this location, in a part of the giant Martian canyon Valles Marineris dubbed West Candor Chasma. For example, I featured similar swirls in August 2022 at a place only about six miles to the east, that spot indicated by the green dot on the overview map above. The white dot marks the location of today’s image.

So, what are we looking at? The elevation drop from the high and low points is only about 180 feet, but in that short distance it appears there are more than two dozen visible layers, and those layers form terraces that alternate between bright and dark material.

The shape of the swirls also suggest that a flow of some kind, either water, ice, or wind, moved from the northwest to the southeast, carving these terraces as it descended the stair steps downward. It is also just as likely that we are seeing repeated lava flows going downhill to the southeast, each even laying another layer on top of the preceeding one. And it is also possible that we are looking at a combination of both.

The alternating dark and light layers suggest that each dark layer was an event that put down dark material, such as volcanic dust, that was subsequently covered with light material, with this process repeating itself many times over the eons.

That the floor of this part of Valles Marineris is uniquely covered in this manner is in itself intriguing. Why here, and not elsewhere within the canyon?

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Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on October 2, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The science team labeled this a “lava margin.” The darker material on the right is apparently a newer deposit of lava, flowing on top of the lighter lava on the left. The newer deposit is only about three feet thick, so it had to have flowed fast almost like water to cover this large area with such a thin layer before freezing. Even so, this new lava layer has a roughness greater than the older layer below it. Either the older layer is smoother because of erosion from wind over eons, or the lava in these two layers was comprised of slightly different materials that froze with different textures.

The small ridges appear to be wrinkle ridges, created when material shrinks as it freezes.

This margin marks the edge of a very large flood lava event, as illustrated by the overview map below.
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Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on December 29, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows strange spidery formations on the rim of a 17-mile-wide crater about 500 miles from the south pole of Mars.

Scientists think these spider features are formed due to the seasonal cycle on Mars. In the winter at the poles the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere falls as snow in the polar regions, creating a thin dry ice mantle that covers everything. When spring arrives, sunlight goes through the clear mantle to heat its base, causing that dry ice to sublimate into gas that is trapped below the mantle. Eventually that mantle cracks at a weak point and the gas escapes, spewing dark dust on its top. By summer the mantle is entirely gone, and the black splotches disappear as they blend back into the same colored ground.

At the south pole the ground appears to be firmer and more structurally sound than at the north pole. The trapped gas appears to travel upward along the same tributary paths to the same escape points each year, thus carving these spidery features that are permanent features.
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Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on December 20, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the science team labels as “Dunes with Blotches.”

The blotches, or as I call them splotches, are the round dark patches on dunes themselves. Though their darkness is reminiscent of the dark patches that appear as spider features in the south polar regions of Mars, there are problems linking the two. The spiders form when the winter mantle of dry ice that falls as snow begins to weaken when the Sun reappears in the spring. Sunlight travels through the clear dry ice to warm the base of the mantle, causing it to sublimate into carbon dioxide gas. That gas however is trapped at the base, and only escapes when the thin mantle cracks at weak points. As the gas puffs out it carries with it dust, which leaves dark patches on the surface that disappear when the mantle disappears entirely by summer.

In the southern hemisphere at the poles the ground is somewhat stable, so the trapped gas appears to travel along the same paths each year to the same weak spots. This in turn causes it to carve spidery patterns in the ground, like river tributaries, except here the tributaries of gas flow uphill to their escape point. At the north pole the ground is not as stable. Instead we have many dunes, so that the dry ice mantle sublimates away at different places each year. There is no chance to form such spider patterns over time.

Making these splotches more puzzling is the season. This picture was taken in the winter, at a time one would think no dry ice is sublimating away.
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Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on September 27, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconniassance Orbiter (MRO). Dubbed a “terrain sample” by the science team, this picture was likely chosen not as part of any specific research project but to fill a gap in the camera schedule so as to maintain that camera’s proper temperature.

When the team needs to do this they try to pick interesting targets. In this case the location is the region of many many parallel north-south fissures that extend for more than 800 miles south of the giant but relative flat shield volcano Alba Mons. These fissures are grabens, cracks formed when underground pressure pushed the ground up and caused it to spread and crack.

What attracted me to this picture is the ridgeline. It struck me as a wonderful place to hike. I have even indicated in red the likely route any trail-maker would pick to go from the valley below up onto the ridge, and then along its knifelike edge to the south. The height of the cliff down to the east valley averages about six hundred feet, guaranteeing beautiful scenery the entire length.
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