Rupes Tenuis. While it may sound like a medical condition, Rupes Tenuis is actually a scarp in the north polar region. We took this image to track any changes from a 2012 observation. (The name is Latin for “thin cliff”.)
HiRISE Picture of the Day archive [More at links]
THEMIS Image of the Day, February 25, 2019. This false color image is located near the head of Chasma Boreale, a large trough in the north polar cap. The floor of the trough is mostly ice free. The linear features in the image are wind driven erosion of the trough floor.
The THEMIS VIS camera contains 5 filters. The data from different filters can be combined in multiple ways to create a false color image. These false color images may reveal subtle variations of the surface not easily identified in a single band image.
Explore more THEMIS Images of the Day by geological subject.
NASA’s Curiosity rover is busy making new discoveries on Mars. The rover has been climbing Mount Sharp since 2014 and recently reached a clay region that may offer new clues about the ancient Martian environment’s potential to support life.
Curiosity encountered a hurdle last Friday, when a hiccup during boot-up interrupted its planned activities and triggered a protective safe mode. The rover was brought out of this mode on Tuesday, Feb. 19, and is otherwise operating normally, having successfully booted up over 30 times without further issues. (…).
“We’re still not sure of its exact cause and are gathering the relevant data for analysis,” said Steven Lee, Curiosity’s deputy project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. JPL leads the Curiosity mission. “The rover experienced a one-time computer reset but has operated normally ever since, which is a good sign,” he added. “We’re currently working to take a snapshot of its memory to better understand what might have happened.”
Out of an abundance of caution, Lee said, science operations will remain on hold until the issue is better understood…. [More at link]
A sinuous ridge in Peraea Cavus. In addition to the ridge, there’s also bright deposits here. A cavus is an irregular steep-sided depression usually in arrays or clusters.
HiRISE Picture of the Day archive [More at links]
THEMIS Image of the Day, February 22, 2019. This VIS false-color image shows a small part of the extensive volcanic plains located east of the giant volcano Olympus Mons.
While the colors are generally soft and subtle, they indicate real differences in the surface materials. These may be due to composition or weathering.
The THEMIS VIS camera contains 5 filters. The data from different filters can be combined in multiple ways to create a false color image. These false color images may reveal subtle variations of the surface not easily identified in a single band image.
Now that InSight has finished placing both science instruments and the wind cover, the arm’s required work is done and the science team can set about commissioning their instruments. For the heat probe instrument, commissioning involves driving its instrumented “mole” as many as 5 meters into the ground beneath the landing site, a process that will take a minimum of 40 days. How does the heat probe’s mole work? Why does it take so long to place it? And what happens if the InSight mole hits a rock? I have answers to these questions for you, with some help from deputy principal investigator Sue Smrekar. And then I’ll tell you about future plans for the arm… [More at link]
These images from ESA’s Mars Express satellite show a branching, desiccated system of trenches and valleys, signs of ancient water flow that hint at a warmer, wetter past for the Red Planet.
We see Mars as a cold, dry world, but plenty of evidence suggests that this was not always the case. Research in past years instead increasingly indicates that the planet once had a thicker, denser atmosphere that was able to lock in far greater amounts of warmth, and therefore facilitate and support the flow of liquid water on the surface below.
While this is no longer the case, we see clear signs of past water activity tracing across the martian surface. This image shows one such region: a system of valleys in the southern highlands of Mars, located east of a large, well-known impact crater called Huygens and north of Hellas, the largest impact basin on the planet. At 3.5 to four billion years old, the southern highlands are some of the oldest and most heavily cratered parts of Mars, with many signs of ancient water flow observed here…. [More at link]
Dust devils on Mars often create long, dark markings where they pull a thin coat of dust off the surface. This image shows a cluster of these tracks on the flat ground below the south polar layered deposits, but none on the layers themselves.
This tells us that either dust devils do not cross the layers, or they do not leave a track there. There are several possible reasons for this. For instance, the dust might be thick enough that the vortex of the dust devil doesn’t expose darker material from underneath the surface. [More at link]
THEMIS Image of the Day, February 21, 2019. This false color image shows part of the floor of Marth Crater. Dark blue tones typically indicate basaltic sands. Wind action is blowing the sand and dust to the southern side of the crater floor. Marth Crater is located in Arabia Terra.
The THEMIS VIS camera contains 5 filters. The data from different filters can be combined in multiple ways to create a false color image. These false color images may reveal subtle variations of the surface not easily identified in a single band image.
Martian weather patterns were fairly typical for this time of season, this past week. Local-scale dust storms pushed eastward along the margins of the seasonal north polar cap. A couple of these storms pushed southward across Acidalia near the beginning and end of the week. Looking to the southern hemisphere, dust storm activity was minimal, apart from a solitary short-lived dust storm over southern Terra Sirenum… [More at link, including video]
