Faces on Mars

Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Many observers can’t help but see faces on Mars. There is the famous non-“Face of Cydo­nia.” Viking 1 showed us a huge smi­ley face in Galle Crater. And we have a lot of fun see­ing faces and fea­tures in the images of the HiRISE cam­era aboard Mars Recon­nais­sance Orbiter.

This one seems to me like an upside down head on a rounded body. Craters make up the eyes on this group of mesas in Huo Hsing Val­lis. These Mar­t­ian mesas are found at about 27 degrees lat­i­tude; what would be con­sid­ered the trop­ics on Earth. But even at this low lat­i­tude, tem­per­a­tures dur­ing the day don’t rise much above the freez­ing point of water. And since there is no sur­face water on Mars, the area is dry and dusty. On Earth, mesas are formed in dry envi­ron­ments as water slowly wears away at weaker mate­r­ial, leav­ing resis­tant caps of rock ris­ing above slop­ing plains. On Mars, the land­scape is shaped by the wind. But wind still does not change the land­scape dra­mat­i­cally on Mars. The craters that make up the eyes of our face, have likely been there for bil­lions of years.

Explore the image. Can you find sand dunes around the mesas? Can you trace the wind pat­terns as it moves through this rough landscape?