NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE Imagery Release 12 December 2007
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Onboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the HiRISE camera offers unprecedented image quality, giving us a view of the Red Planet in a way never before seen. It’s the most powerful camera ever to leave Earth’s orbit.
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Basal Exposure of the South Polar Layered Deposits South polar layered deposits are an accumulation of layers of mostly water ice and dust, similar in some ways to the ice caps in Greenland and Antarctica. |
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Wrinkle Ridges in Hesperia Planum Wrinkle ridges are most commonly believed to form from horizontal compression or shortening of the crust due to faulting and are often found in volcanic plains. |
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Fractures and Grooves in South Polar Layered Deposits In this example, the icy, dusty layers are barely visible, obscured by a complex system of ridges and fractures that formed after the layers were deposited. |
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Sand and Rock in Meridiani Planum There are two broad categories of material in the image: light-toned sedimentary rock and dark-toned material, which is likely wind-blown sand. |
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Complex Folded Terrain on the Floor of Hellas Basin Hellas is the deepest impact basin on Mars and perhaps in the Solar System. |
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Time-Lapse Case Study The sequence of events experienced by araneiform terrain at Mars’ south pole are investigated in a series of images acquired through spring and summer in the southern hemisphere. |
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Lizard-Skin Surface Texture The south polar region of Mars is covered seasonally with translucent carbon dioxide ice. |
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Starburst Channels Translucent carbon dioxide ice covers the polar regions of Mars seasonally, warmed and evaporating from below. |
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Dry Ice Etches Terrain Every year seasonal carbon dioxide ice, known to us as “dry ice,” covers the poles of Mars. |
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Cryptic Terrain on Mars There is an enigmatic region near the south pole of Mars known as the “cryptic” terrain. |
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Isolated Araneiform Topography Have you ever found that to describe something you had to go to the dictionary and search for just the right word? |
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Color Reveals Translucent Seasonal Ice In a region near the south pole of Mars translucent carbon dioxide ice covers the ground seasonally. For the first time we can “see” the translucent ice by the affect it has on the appearance of the surface below. |
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New Vocabulary: Araneiform and Lace Terrains The south polar terrain on Mars contains landforms unlike any that we see on Earth, so much that a new vocabulary is required to describe them. |
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Active Processes: Bright Streaks and Dark Fans In a region of the south pole known informally as “Ithaca” numerous fans of dark frost form every spring. |
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Field of Fans In this image there are two lanes of undisturbed ice bordered by two lanes peppered with fans of dark dust. |
