Streaking on Mars

Credit: NASA/JPL/Uni­ver­sity of Ari­zona

Streaks along a crater rim on Mars take on a wavy and ghostly appear­ance in this image form NASA’s HiRISE camera.

What sto­ries does your imag­i­na­tion cre­ate with the shapes and pat­terns found in this image? leave a note below.

Explore the crater and sur­round­ing plains. Unlike the light-colored sand abun­dant on the beaches of Earth, Mar­t­ian sand is dark and made up mostly of a dark min­eral called basalt. On Mars, lightly col­ored wind­blown dust cov­ers most of sur­face. But when the sur­face is dis­turbed by dust dev­ils or land­slides, the dark sand is exposed leav­ing strik­ing patterns.

As you move away from what sci­en­tists call slope streaks, look for the chan­nel cut into the crater wall and floor. At one time in Mars’ dis­tant past, lava sur­rounded the crater, found a low part in the rim and chan­neled its way to the bot­tom. This must have hap­pened on an early Mars. Look for fresh and eroded craters in the plains above the crater.

Launched with Mars Recon­nais­sance Orbiter, or MRO, in 2005, HiRISE is one of six instru­ments aboard the space­craft orbit­ing Mars. HiRISEs cam­era can see objects on the sur­face as small as a beach ball. The instru­ment can also offer sci­en­tists stereo views of the surface.