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Probe Captures Avalanche on Mars
mdekato writes "MSNBC reports that NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured an avalanche on Mars' surface as it happened. Very good still images show what must have been an awesome sight. 'The full image reveals features as small as a desk in a strip of terrain 3.7 miles (6 kilometers) wide and more than 10 times that long, at 84 degrees north latitude. Reddish layers known to be rich in water ice make up the face of a steep slope more than 2,300 feet (700 meters) tall, running the length of the image. Mars' north pole is covered by a cap of ice, and it even snows there. The scientists suspect that more ice than dust probably makes up the material that fell from the upper portion of the scarp.'"
Here are the links at which all the images taken by the HiRISE instrument can be found from low res to high res raw data :
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/gallery/press/20080303a.html/
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_007338_2640/
jdb2
The original story from NASA contains some fascinating additional details, a beautiful picture of the Earth and the Moon taken from Mars orbit, and links to thousands of other Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter images that were also released yesterday.
Saddle up: Riding with Robots
speaking of "avalanches" of dust and rock, the image that was thought to indicate present day water movement on mars may actually be the result of one of these dust avalanches instead.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Well first of all, he obviously said "A lot" hasn't changed, not all. The dust storms don't result in noticable changes to anything from a reasonable distance, certainly not from space. The recent storm that cut into the rovers solar power deposited a layer of dust not even thick enough to be opaque (fortunately), and for any natural objects, it's just dust that was already on them anyways. The dust is ultra-fine grit; nothing that catches the eye by itself.
The polar CO2 icecaps come and go with the seasons, but are basically the same year to year.
The dunes shift almost imperceptibly with the prevailing winds, but dunefields stay in the same approximate place.
I think once or twice a crater has been discovered that wasn't in an older image. Meteor impacts are extremely rare and have yet to be seen in the instant of occurrence on Mars.
Volcanic activity is completely non-existant on present-day Mars.
There's quite a bit of stuff continually happening on Mars, but compared to Earth it looks dead. In comparison to a dust storm or a shifting sand-dune, seeing an avalance consisting of thousands of tons or more of material, some it probably decent size pieces actually in motion on Mars is like Die Hard versus a 1920's silent film. Heck, avalances and landslides even on busy earth are among the more remarkable geological processes.
And seeing an event that lasts perhaps a few minutes on a planet that won't be completely mapped by MRO's HiRISE camera during it's entire time in operation is a really compelling hint that rapidly occuring events like this aren't entirely rare.
When someone pointed out this image yesterday, I just stared at it in amazement for several minutes. This ranks up there Io's volcanoes in coolness. Shoemaker-Levy 9 hitting Jupiter still ranks as solar system natural event of the century, in my book, however.
It always amazes me that people will post the most slimmed down third party
summation of a detailed article that appears on a non-commercial site:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/multimedia/mro20080303a.html
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Why not? There are plenty of proposals for skintight suits.
The only problem is the helmets, but I'm sure that can be addressed with a 360 degree glass bubble.
GPL Deconstructed
Most of the Martian terrain has apparantly been static for up to millions of years. Dust storms are one thing; we know there is a dynamic atmosphere with seasons and weather there. Capturing an actual avalance, where the surface features are moving and changing, is another matter entirely.
No, desks are lighter.
Damn those pesky terrorists
It's a question of exposure levels. Go out and take a picture of the full moon. If you have exposed the moon correctly, you won't see any stars around it, either. Its light will have washed them all out. Same deal here.
Saddle up: Riding with Robots