Tag: Mars

The gigantic lava flows off of the solar system’s biggest known volcano

12:50 pm

Olympus Mons' gigantic lava flow
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped, reduced, and annotated to post here, was taken on October 30, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The picture covers a very tiny section of the southeast flank of Olympus Mons, the largest known volcano in the solar system. The arrow indicates the direction of the downward slope.

Olympus Mons itself is about 400 miles wide with an actual height relative to Mars’ “sea level” of just under 70,000 feet, more than twice as high as Mount Everest on Earth. The mountain’s flanks, almost 200 miles long from caldera edge to base, drop about 54,000 feet. That average drop of about 270 feet every mile is not particular steep, but its continuous nature over such a very very long distance makes its quite daunting.

You can see evidence of that slope in the photo. The downward pointing lobes each indicate the volcano’s last separate lava flows that ceased moving when each froze in place, probably several tens of millions of years ago. These lobes were also placed on top of many earlier flows from the volcano’s past eruptions that probably continued for several billion years, beginning 3.5 billion years ago.

The overview map helps provide a sense of scale by placing this image on that mountain flank.
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Perseverance captures solar eclipse by Phobos

1:40 pm

Phobos eclipse the Sun
Click for full image.

Cool movie time! The photo to the right, cropped to post here, shows the Sun partly blocked by the Mars’ moon Phobos, taken by the high resolution camera on Perseverance on the surface of Mars. Below I have embedded the full movie compiled from the images taken as Phobos moved across the Sun’s face. From the caption:

It’s long been known that Phobos is drifting toward the Martian surface year by year; tens of millions of years from now, it is expected to crash into the planet or fragment into chunks that will impact the planet. Studying Phobos’ orbit also allows scientists to refine predictions of when the doomed moon will crash into Mars.

Unfortunately, the website does not say when this solar eclipse occurred. The spots on the lower left of the Sun’s face are sunspots.
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Perseverance spots its parachute

11:50 am

Perseverance spots its parachute
Click for full resolution. Original images found here and here.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! Today the Perseverance science team released two photos taken on April 6th that captured the parachute that the rover had used to land on Mars on February 18, 2021. The enhanced panorama above is from those images. The white feature near the center is the parachute. The mountains in the distance are the southern rim of Jezero Crater, about 40 miles away.

The overview map to the right gives the context. The red dot is Perserverance’s location as of yesterday, on sol 413. The black dot marks its location on April 6th, when it took the pictures. The green dot marks Ingenuity’s present position. The yellow lines indicate the approximate area covered by the panorama.

Ingenuity had not completed its 25th flight until April 8th, two days after these photos were taken, so it isn’t actually just off the edge of these photos, it is beyond the near ridgeline out of sight.

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White sediment in Martian slot canyon

9:43 am

White sediment in Martian slot canyon
Click for full image.

Yesterday’s Picture of the Day from the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) revisited a captioned image first posted in February 2014 by the science team. That picture, cropped and enhanced, is to the right. From the 2014 caption:

There is a large channel system that flows into the basin, called Ladon Valles, and scientists think that the basin may have once filled with water before another channel to the north formed and drained it. These exposures of light-toned layered sediments provide clues about the environment that existed within Ladon Basin when water may have ponded and deposited these sediments.

Later research has generally concluded that these white sediments are iron and magnesium smectites, often appearing as white tuff material whose deposition is generally associated with precipitation of water or snow and its subsequent evaporation or sublimation.
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Ingenuity completes 25th flight, the longest yet

10:51 am

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

On April 8th the Mars helicopter Ingenuity successfully completed its 25th flight on Mars, traveling 2,310 feet at 18 feet per second while flying for 161.3 seconds.

The long distance was designed to take it out from the rough region dubbed Seitah and near the delta that is the prime geological target of the rover Perseverance.

The overview map shows the location of both rover and helicopter as of today. The red dot is Perseverance, the green dot is Ingenuity. The rover has now completed its entire planned travels, as announced in June 2021. Where it goes next has not as yet not been announced. According to the team, they plan to use Ingenuity to scout out possibly routes up onto the delta. This likely means the rover will likely spend some time at the base of the delta, getting as much data as it can, while Ingenuity does this scouting work.

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Frozen lava in Mars’ volcano country

5:31 pm

The frozen lava of the Athabasca flood plain
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on January 28, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what appears to be at first glance a relatively featureless plain with a lighter material covered by a patchwork of darker material.

Note however the lack of craters. Except for several faint depressions near the image’s center, there are none. And those depressions look like the expression of craters that have been covered by material. Is the two-toned surface here an expression of past lava flows? Or are we seeing an ice-sheeted plain, with the patches representing higher terrain above that plain?

The overview map below answers the question somewhat clearly.
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MAVEN and Al-Amal scientists sign agreement to collaborate

1:20 pm

Scientists running the Mars orbiters MAVEN (from NASA) and Al-Amal (from the United Arab Emirates [UAE]) have signed an agreement to share data and — more importantly — coordinate their observations of the Martian atmosphere.

A new partnership that encourages the sharing of data between NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) project and the Emirates Mars Mission’s (EMM) Hope Probe (Al-Amal in Arabic) will enhance scientific returns from both spacecraft, which are currently orbiting Mars and collecting data on the Red Planet’s atmosphere. The arrangement is expected to add value to both MAVEN and EMM, as well as the scientific communities involved in analyzing the data the missions collect.

MAVEN went into orbit around Mars in 2014. Its mission is to investigate the upper atmosphere and ionosphere of Mars, offering an insight into how the planet’s climate has changed over time. “MAVEN and EMM are each exploring different aspects of the Martian atmosphere and upper-atmosphere system,” said Shannon Curry, MAVEN principal investigator from the University of California, Berkeley. “Combined, we will have a much better understanding of the coupling between the two, and the influence of the lower atmosphere on the escape to space of gas from the upper atmosphere.”

The EMM Hope Probe, which went into Mars orbit in 2021, is studying the relationship between the upper layer and lower regions of the Martian atmosphere, giving insight into the planet’s atmosphere at different times of the day and seasons.

What this agreement means is that the two science teams can more quickly match up the data from both orbiters, and figure out the relationships between both.

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Curiosity retreating from Greenheugh Pediment

10:05 am

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Because of the incredible roughness of the ground on the Greenheugh Pediment, the science team for the rover Curiosity has decided to make a major change in their route. Rather than continue their traverse across this terrain, as planned for years, they have decided to back off in order to protect Curiosity’s dinged wheels, and find a more friendly route up Mount Sharp.

“It was obvious from Curiosity’s photos that this would not be good for our wheels,” said Curiosity Project Manager Megan Lin of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which leads the mission. “It would be slow going, and we wouldn’t have been able to implement rover-driving best practices.”

The gator-back rocks aren’t impassable – they just wouldn’t have been worth crossing, considering how difficult the path would be and how much they would age the rover’s wheels.

So the mission is mapping out a new course for the rover as it continues to explore Mount Sharp, a 3.4-mile-tall (5.5-kilometer-tall) mountain that Curiosity has been ascending since 2014. As it climbs, Curiosity is able to study different sedimentary layers that were shaped by water billions of years ago. These layers help scientists understand whether microscopic life could have survived in the ancient Martian environment.

The plan is to retrace the rover’s path back through Gordon Notch and then head uphill though another gap that will take it directly onto the next sedimentary layer, dubbed the sulfate unit. On the overview map above, the red dotted line shows the long-planned route. The yellow lines indicate the area seen in the panorama I posted on April 6th, when Curiosity was at its farthest into the pediment. The blue dot marks Curiosity’s position two days ago. You can see that it has retreated backwards.

This change means the scientists will likely not get a close look at Gediz Vallis Ridge. However, it also means the rover will likely reach Gediz Vallis much sooner that previously planned.

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Perseverance arrives at Three Forks at the base of Jezero Crater’s delta

12:01 pm

Panorama of delta in Jezero Crater
Original images found here, here, here, and here. Click for full resolution.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The panorama above was created from four navigation camera images taken by the Mars rover Perseverance on April 10th. Because the lens on Perseverance’s navigation cameras produce slightly curved images which are taken in pairs, the panorama is made of two parts, each a pair perfectly matched images looking from a different angle. I have overlapped the pairs but as you can see, the match at the center is imperfect. While this does not produce a single smooth image, the two paired panoramas show the foot of the entire delta that had flowed into Jezero crater in the past and is the prime geological target of the rover. What is it made of? What caused it to flow into the crater? When did it do it? How was Mars different when it did so? Was the crater wet? Was the delta mud when it flowed, or was it sediment under water, pushed out by that flowing water?

The location map to the right is taken from the “Where is Perseverance?” webpage but annotated to show the planned routes of both Perseverance and Ingenuity, as shown by the tan dashed lines. The red dot marks Perseverance present location, the green dot Ingenuty’s. The yellow lines the approximate area covered by the panorama.

What next? Expect Perseverance to move as close to the base of the delta’s cliff as possible and spend at least several months studying it. Ingenuity meanwhile will be flown to the west to scout the various hollows that are potential routes for Perseverance to climb up onto the delta.

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Splonk went the crater!

12:59 pm

Splonk went the crater!
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on February 18, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label as a “degraded crater in Utopia Planitia.”

There is a lot of intriguing geology in this one image. First of course is the crater itself. We have to ask, is it from an impact or from some volcanic process? The location, at 44 degrees north latitude, argues that some form of ice or mud process was involved. Maybe we are looking at a frozen eruption from an underground ice layer. If this was instead caused by an impact, the crater’s ringlike structure could have been created by the ripples of melted ice and mud emanating away but then quickly refreezing.

Surrounding the crater are many small fissures, the largest ones all oriented in a north-south direction. If there is an ice layer near the surface, these cracks might be caused by that ice sublimating away. Why the largest cracks orient in the same direction however is a mystery.

The color variations suggest [pdf] dust (red-orange) as well as a variety of minerals (green). Since no blue appears visible in this version of the photo, if this crater was shaped by melting or erupting ice, that ice is well covered by that layer of dust and debris.

The location map below as always provides context.
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Curiosity’s upcoming rough terrain

12:25 pm

Curiosity's view looking west on April 5, 2022 (Sol 3435)Click for high resolution. For original images go here, here, here, and here.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The panorama above, created by me from four photos taken by Curiosity’s right navigation camera on April 5, 2022, reveal much about the alien world of Mars that the rover is exploring. The red dotted line indicates approximately the rover’s upcoming route.

First there is the rough surface of the Greenheugh Pediment, the sloping plateau that Curiosity is presently traversing. Called “gater-back terrain” by the science team, this broken surface apparently is sandstone that was originally a dune field that in the past was periodically washed by water runoff and later hardened into this structurally weak rock.

Second, I have orientated the images so that the rim of Gale Crater, approximately 25 miles away, is horizontal. By doing so, we can see the upward slope of the Greenheugh Pediment. Curiosity is on a tilted surface, and while it will be traversing along a contour line as it heads west towards Gediz Vallis Ridge about 1,000 feet away, when it turns left and heads uphill, the climb will be steady and steep, as it has now been for the past year since the rover entered the mountains at the foot of Mount Sharp.

Taken together, these details indicate why Curiosity has moved very slowly in recent weeks, as shown by the white dots in the overview map to the right. The blue dot marks Curiosity’s present location, with the yellow lines indicate the approximate view in the panorama above.

Traversing the pediment carries real risk to the rover. Though its somewhat dinged wheels have held up well during this last year of traveling in these rough mountains, at any point the severe roughness here could damage one or more wheels significantly, even putting one or more out of commission. The rover team is traveling carefully to avoid this, but these factors illustrate a possible end for the rover, though hopefully still years away.

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Ingenuity completes its 24th flight on Mars

9:14 pm

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Ingenuity today completed its 24th flight on Mars, traveling a short 33 feet for 69.5 seconds in order to place it in a good position for an upcoming record-setting 25th flight.

With Flight 24 in our log book, it is now time to look forward to our upcoming effort that charts a course out of Séítah. Flight 25 – which was uplinked yesterday – will send Ingenuity 704 meters to the northwest (almost 80 meters longer than the current record – Flight 9). The helicopter’s ground speed will be about 5.5 meters per second (another record) and we expect to be in the rarefied Martian air for about 161.5 seconds.

The red dot on the map to the right indicates Perseverance’s present position. The green dot shows where Ingenuity landed today. The tan dashed lines indicate the planned routes for both. Ingenuity’s next flight will take it out of the rough terrain of Seitah and much closer to Three Forks.

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