Tag Archives: Oceanus Borealis

Did Mars Pathfinder explore edge of northern ocean?

Posted on March 19, 2019 by rburnham

NASA’s first rover mission to Mars, the Pathfinder, imaged an extraterrestrial marine spillover landscape 22 years ago, according to a new paper by Planetary Science Institute Senior Scientist Alexis Rodriguez. The landing site is on the spillway of an ancient … Continue reading →

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Did impact-generated tsunamis make ‘thumbprint terrain’?

Posted on March 29, 2017 by rburnham

Thirty years ago, during a 3-month long visit to the U.S. Geological Survey in Arizona, Francois Costard saw Viking orbiter images of Mars’s northern plains showing strange curving features along the boundary between the Martian northern and southern hemispheres. Costard, … Continue reading →

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Mega-tsunamis likely altered Mars landscape

Posted on May 20, 2016 by rburnham

The geologic shape of what were once shorelines through Mars’ northern plains convinces scientists that two large meteorites – hitting the planet millions of years apart – triggered a pair of mega-tsunamis. These gigantic waves forever scarred the Martian landscape … Continue reading →

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Mars has lost an ‘Arctic Ocean’ of water

Posted on March 5, 2015 by rburnham

A primitive ocean on Mars held more water than Earth’s Arctic Ocean, and covered a greater portion of the planet’s surface than the Atlantic Ocean does on Earth, according to new results published today in Science. An international team of … Continue reading →

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MARSIS detects “Oceanus Borealis” sediments

Posted on January 25, 2012 by rburnham

The ground-penetrating radar instrument MARSIS on the Mars Express orbiter has measured the electrical properties of the north and south polar regions. The results, reported in Geophysical Research Letters by Jérémie Mouginot (University of California, Irvine) and colleagues, strongly support … Continue reading →

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A polar ocean leaves few clay deposits

Posted on August 28, 2011 by rburnham

The northern lowlands of Mars have long invited the notion that in ancient times they once contained a now-vanished polar ocean. Yet a longstanding argument against such was the lack of widespread clay minerals that would naturally occur with such … Continue reading →

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