HiRISE: Exploring the sandy province of Herschel Crater

ESP_050159_1655While perhaps not awe-inspiringly beautiful, sand sheets can tell us about Mars’ current and past environmental conditions as a piece of the puzzle for understanding habitability.

This view shows the downwind stretches of a sand sheet in central part of the much larger Herschel Crater. This sandy province began kilometers upwind in a string of barchan sand dunes. As the north-to-south blowing wind weakened downwind, it could no longer fashion the sand into dunes but rather into amorphously-shaped sand sheets… [More at link]

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