Martian Cones

Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Cones run diag­o­nally across the mar­tial land­scape in this image from NASA’s HiRISE camera.

Explore the series of hills and ridges in this image. Sci­en­tists see land­scape sim­i­lar to this in Ice­land where hot lava has run over wet ground. On Mars, large sheets of lava may have moved over water or ice. Heat from the molten lava boiled the water under­neath. The water vapor burst through the lava like an explod­ing bub­ble. Some of the bub­bles burst cre­at­ing fea­tures that look like craters. Domes formed as gas built up under the lava, rais­ing it but not explod­ing. A long series of bub­bles was needed to cre­ate these fea­tures. They appear in chains because the sur­face of lava was mov­ing while the explo­sions were tak­ing place.

Launched with Mars Recon­nais­sance Orbiter in 2005, HiRISE is one of six instru­ments aboard the space­craft orbit­ing Mars. HiRISE’s cam­era can see objects on the sur­face as small as a beach ball.