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Aonia Terra Dune Field

Aonia Terra Dune Field

August 18, 2009

Aonia Terra Dune Field

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NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

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Gale Crater forms a large natural repository for much of Martian geologic history.
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Gale Crater forms a large natural repository for much of Martian geologic history.
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This observation from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows a sand dune field in the Nili Fossae region of Mars. The dark lines swirling over the surface of the dunes are the tracks of dust devi...
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This observation from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows a sand dune field in the Nili Fossae region of Mars. The dark lines swirling over the surface of the dunes are the tracks of dust devils.
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The bright landing platform left behind by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity in 2004 is visible inside Eagle Crater, at upper right in this April 8, 2017, observation by NASA's Mars Reconna...
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The bright landing platform left behind by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity in 2004 is visible inside Eagle Crater, at upper right in this April 8, 2017, observation by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
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NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter dips into the thin martian atmosphere to adjust its orbit in this artist's concept illustration.
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Artist concept of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter during aerobraking.
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Aerobraking
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Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is Off to Mars!
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Recent small craters discovered by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter expose buried ice in the middle latitudes of Mars.
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Recent small craters discovered by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter expose buried ice in the middle latitudes of Mars.
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This rainbow-colored map shows underground water ice on Mars. Cool colors are closer to the surface than warm colors; black zones indicate areas where a spacecraft would sink into fine dust; the ou...
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This rainbow-colored map shows underground water ice on Mars.
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This terrain is covered by pits and scallops (pits open on one side), perhaps due to collapse after sublimation of subsurface ice.
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This terrain is covered by pits and scallops (pits open on one side)
Utopia Planitia Scallops, Polygons, and Boulders (3-D)
This stereo view shows an area on Mars where narrow rock ridges intersect at angles forming corners of polygons. It combines two observations from the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Or...
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This stereo view shows an area on Mars where narrow rock ridges intersect at angles forming corners of polygons. It combines two observations from the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and appears three-dimensional when viewed through red-blue glasses with the red lens on the left.
Blade-Like Martian Walls Outline Polygons (Stereo)
A variety of landforms, including isolated hills, eroded mesas, dark eroded sediments, and dunes are seen within an area called "Aram Chaos."
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This image shows the topography, with shading added, around the area where NASA's Curiosity rover landed on Aug. 5 PDT (Aug. 6 EDT).
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This image shows the topography, with shading added, around the area where NASA's Curiosity rover landed on Aug. 5 PDT (Aug. 6 EDT).
Where Water Flowed Downslope
A newly found, buried deposit of frozen carbon dioxide -- dry ice -- near the south pole of Mars contains about 30 times more carbon dioxide than previously estimated to be frozen near the pole.
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A newly found, buried deposit of frozen carbon dioxide -- dry ice -- near the south pole of Mars contains about 30 times more carbon dioxide than previously estimated to be frozen near the pole.
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NASA's Curiosity Mars rover and its tracks are visible in this view combining information from three observations by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Re...
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Stereo View of Curiosity and Rover Tracks at 'the Kimberley,' April 2014
Stereo View of Curiosity and Rover Tracks at 'the Kimberley,' April 2014
Details such as the shadow of the mast on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity appear in an image taken Aug. 17, 2012, by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconn...
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Details such as the shadow of the mast on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity appear in an image taken Aug. 17, 2012, by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, from more directly overhead than previous HiRISE images of Curiosity.
Orbiter View of Curiosity From Nearly Straight Overhead
The High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (Hi-RISE) camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this avalanche plunging down a 1,640-foot-tall (500-meter-tall) cliff on May 29, 2...
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This image shows an outcrop of the south polar layered deposits (SPLD). The SPLD consist of layers of ice and admixed dust and make up the bulk of the dome-shaped Planum Australe.
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This image shows an outcrop of the south polar layered deposits (SPLD). The SPLD consist of layers of ice and admixed dust and make up the bulk of the dome-shaped Planum Australe. Planum Australe is, in some ways, analogous to the Antarctic ice sheet. Troughs and scarps carved into Planum Australe by erosional processes have exposed SPLD layers within it. In this image, the darkest area at the bottom of the image is the bottom of the scarp. Except for the dark material at the bottom of the slope, much of the changes in brightness in this image are due to the lighting angle, the direction from which the sun is illuminating the slope. Much like ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica and deep sea sediment cores, the icy-dusty layers of the SPLD may have preserved a record of recent Mars climate history. Understanding that record is a complex process and involves, among many other types of analyses, examining the differences and similarities in appearance between each layer and attempting to classify layer types. This image shows nice examples of different layer textures. But what is especially interesting about this image are the faults cutting through the layers. These faults appear as diagonal lines, on either side of which, the layering is offset. Note that the faults are not clean, single lines, but appear in long groups of short lines. What caused these faults is still under investigation, but, among other possibilities, they could be related to an earlier time when temperatures were higher and the ice was flowing at a much faster rate than it is today.
Troughs and Scarps in Planum Australe
The Mars Climate Sounder, an instrument on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter designed to monitor daily changes in the global atmosphere of Mars, made its first observations of Mars on March 24, 2006.
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Gullies on Martian sand dunes, like these in Matara Crater, have been very active, with many flows in the last ten years. In this image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter frost in and around t...
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Gullies of Matara Crater
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This map shows the frequency of carbon dioxide frost's presence at sunrise on Mars, as a percentage of days year-round. Carbon dioxide ice more often covers the ground at night in some mid-latitude...
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This map shows the frequency of carbon dioxide frost's presence at sunrise on Mars, as a percentage of days year-round. Carbon dioxide ice more often covers the ground at night in some mid-latitude regions than in polar regions, where it is generally absent for much of summer and fall.
Where on Mars Does Carbon Dioxide Frost Form Often?
This observation shows a wrinkle ridge in Solis Planum, located in the Thaumasia region of Mars, a high-elevation volcanic plain located south of the Valles Marineris canyon system and east of the ...
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Wrinkle Ridge in Solis Planum
This set of images from cameras on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter documents the appearance of a new cluster of impact craters on Mars.
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HiRISE image of Planum Chronium Region.
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HiRISE image of Planum Chronium Region.
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A towering dust devil casts a serpentine shadow over the Martian surface in this image acquired by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
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This image taken in December 2022 by HiRISE on MRO appears to show a bear's face on the Mars' surface, made up of a hill, craters and a circular fracture pattern.
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This image, taken with the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera, shows the transition between the "Murray Formation," in which layers are poorly expressed and difficult to tra...
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This image shows a base map of Mount Sharp with the transition between the "Murray Formation," with the rover's old path marked in white and the new path marked in yellow.
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