Photo: ESA/Roscosmos/CaSSIS
There’s a very good chance all of you reading this piece right now have seen at least once an image taken from some satellite showing the Great Pyramids at Giza – three human-made structures, neatly lined up to the cardinal points and still spreading their mystery into the world. Well, here stands something strangely similar, only on Mars, not human-made, and not that pointy.
What you’re looking at is a photo showing a small portion of the Lunae Planum region on Mars. It was taken this March by the CaSSIS camera fitted on the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and released this month by the European Space Agency to the bewilderment of us all.
ESA titles this thing as a crater trio. The image shows three medium-sized impact craters somehow weirdly lined up on the Martian plane, accompanied by countless other, smaller craters that dot the surface in that region.
According to the details provided by the Europeans, the particular region shown in the pic is covered by large lava deposits that formed, probably, from materials spewing long ago from the Tharsis Montes volcanoes in the vicinity.
That could explain the shape of the craters, but ESA gives no explanation as to why they’re so neatly lined up, leaving us to speculate on how crazy nature, even as alien as that in space and on Mars, can be.
As for the TGO, the science mission has been in Martian orbit since 2018, having a closer look at the planet’s atmospheric gases and searching for water-rich locations on the surface.
ESA plans to use this particular spacecraft to support its upcoming, first rover to Mars. Called ExoMars,just like the mission that placed the TGO in orbit, the adventure should see a rover called Rosalind Franklin being deployed on the planet two years from now.
ESA titles this thing as a crater trio. The image shows three medium-sized impact craters somehow weirdly lined up on the Martian plane, accompanied by countless other, smaller craters that dot the surface in that region.
According to the details provided by the Europeans, the particular region shown in the pic is covered by large lava deposits that formed, probably, from materials spewing long ago from the Tharsis Montes volcanoes in the vicinity.
That could explain the shape of the craters, but ESA gives no explanation as to why they’re so neatly lined up, leaving us to speculate on how crazy nature, even as alien as that in space and on Mars, can be.
As for the TGO, the science mission has been in Martian orbit since 2018, having a closer look at the planet’s atmospheric gases and searching for water-rich locations on the surface.
ESA plans to use this particular spacecraft to support its upcoming, first rover to Mars. Called ExoMars,just like the mission that placed the TGO in orbit, the adventure should see a rover called Rosalind Franklin being deployed on the planet two years from now.
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