Sand dunes are frequent on Mars, and they are often discovered just about all over the place on the planet. It’s not shocking, subsequently, that Mars is named a desert world. The dunes are available many alternative shapes and sizes. On March 3, 2023, NASA shared a picture from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) which are a bit extra uncommon: They’re spherical, and a few of them are practically completely round. How did they kind?
MRO took the pictures with its Excessive-Decision Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) digicam on November 22, 2022. The College of Arizona additionally published them on their HiRISE web site on March 2, 2023.
Last chance to get a moon phase calendar! Only a few left..
Spherical sand dunes on Mars
The darkish, round dunes are alongside the sting of a bigger subject of dunes which have extra irregular shapes. They type of appear like polka dots. As Alfred McEwen wrote on the HiRISE web site:
Sand dunes of many styles and sizes are frequent on Mars. On this instance, the dunes are virtually completely round, which is uncommon. They’re nonetheless barely asymmetrical, with steep slip faces on the south ends. This means that sand usually strikes to the south, however the winds could also be variable. That is a part of a sequence of pictures to observe how frost disappears within the late winter; this commentary seems to be freed from frost. A earlier picture reveals when the floor was coated by frost.
The decision of the posted picture is 25 centimeters (9.8 inches) per pixel. Whereas, within the unique picture, it’s 30.3 centimeters (11.9 inches) per pixel. The sand dunes are inside a crater within the Utopia Planitia area within the northern hemisphere. The unnamed crater, close to Renaudot Crater, is simply north of Syrtis Major.
Seasonal frost modifications
NASA noticed the weird sand dunes whereas monitoring the area for seasonal modifications in frost patterns. The picture exhibiting the darkish dunes reveals little, if any, frost on the bottom. A previous image, nevertheless, reveals the bottom, together with the dunes, coated in a skinny layer of frost.
Maybe surprisingly, even with its very skinny environment, each frost and sand dunes are frequent on Mars. Certainly, orbiters, landers and rovers have all seen skinny layers of water-ice frost on the Martian floor. The Viking landers, actually, photographed each frost and sand dunes within the Nineteen Eighties.
MRO has been surveying Mars since 2006. It research the Martian environment, floor and geology. Likewise, the HiRISE digicam onboard has taken hundreds of high-resolution pictures of the planet and its two moons, Phobos and Deimos.
Additionally, in 2019, NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter noticed hexagonal-shaped sand dunes. Mars could be a bizarre place, certainly!
Backside line: NASA has simply launched a brand new photograph, taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, of intriguing spherical sand dunes on Mars. How did they kind?