Streaking Dolphins

Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Streaks in the dunes of Mars remind me of play­ful dol­phins in this image from NASA’s HiRISE cam­era aboard Mars Recon­nais­sance Orbiter. HiRISE began imag­ing Mars again just last month after tech­ni­cians decided that what­ever caused a series of com­puter glitches aboard the space­craft would not threaten the mis­sion. HiRISE and the other sci­en­tific instru­ments aboard MRO had gone into “safe-mode” in August. HiRISE is return­ing spec­tac­u­lar imagery now.

Explore the image from the par­al­lel dunes at the bot­tom of the image (actu­ally north) to the rugged moun­tains at the edge of the impact crater. My favorite is the dunes inside the crater in the dune field at the bot­tom. See how the sand has filled in and smoothed the crater’s appearance?

Enhanced color subimage

This image is part of the cen­tral pit of an ancient impact crater in the high trop­ics on Mars. Deep bedrock is exposed dur­ing a large impact, uncov­er­ing a diverse vari­ety of rock types and col­ors. These col­or­ful streaks show where bedrock is erod­ing and then swept away by the wind.