Photo: NASA/JPL/UArizona
“Sometimes we see circles on the Martian landscape with no apparent cause, such as in this picture of Utopia Planitia.” This is how the people behind the powerful HiRISE camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter describe the image you’re looking at now, shot not long ago from high above Mars.
What you’re looking at is a piece of the Utopia Planitia, one of the many cool-named regions of Mars. The image was captured by the HiRISE (High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera from an altitude of 285 km (177 miles) in May 2021, and was published not long ago by the University of Arizona.
The team behind the relentless eye in the Martian sky focused in the case of this image on the circles that dot the Martian surface, for which, as said, they could find no “apparent cause,” thus naming them ghost craters.
Ghost craters would be those tell-tale signs of asteroids and other such space rocks impacting Mars, that somehow got buried, together with their surroundings, in planetary material. According to the scientists studying the planet, this material compacts over time, and in areas where the thickness of theis material is the same, “the surface would drop in height by the same amount everywhere.”
Inside the craters themselves however, a larger amount of material means there’s more compaction and dropdown of the surface, leading to strange-looking impact craters like the one we see here (click second photo to enlarge and be amazed of what you're actually looking at).
As for the apparent tracks running in circles in this photo, these are of course not made by one of the many rovers that have visited the planet over the years, but are the result of cracks that appear on the edge of a crater when it gets stretched as the material above gets compacted over time.
The team behind the relentless eye in the Martian sky focused in the case of this image on the circles that dot the Martian surface, for which, as said, they could find no “apparent cause,” thus naming them ghost craters.
Ghost craters would be those tell-tale signs of asteroids and other such space rocks impacting Mars, that somehow got buried, together with their surroundings, in planetary material. According to the scientists studying the planet, this material compacts over time, and in areas where the thickness of theis material is the same, “the surface would drop in height by the same amount everywhere.”
Inside the craters themselves however, a larger amount of material means there’s more compaction and dropdown of the surface, leading to strange-looking impact craters like the one we see here (click second photo to enlarge and be amazed of what you're actually looking at).
As for the apparent tracks running in circles in this photo, these are of course not made by one of the many rovers that have visited the planet over the years, but are the result of cracks that appear on the edge of a crater when it gets stretched as the material above gets compacted over time.
Google News