Unusual formations in Mars' Arabia Terra region reveal the Red Planet's climate history.
What is it?
Like the wavy structures of a coral reef, layered deposits in the Arabia Terra region of Mars showcase the planet's strange beauty and even stranger past.
In this new image captured by the HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, you can see lighter deposits layered on top of larger formations in Martian impact craters.
And while the image itself is quite striking, it's more than just a pretty picture. This kind of visual data can help researchers better understand what has happened on the Red Planet over the years.
"Researchers have proposed that the rhythmic nature of the layers and their extensive coverage across much of Arabia Terra could be due to global cyclic processes, such as dust storms, perhaps involving groundwater," HiRISE co-investigator Cathy Weitz said in a recent blog post.
"The deposits are currently undergoing erosion, which has produced crenulations, pits, and jagged edges. Darker wind-blown (aeolian) ripples and debris has more recently covered and infilled portions of the layered deposit," Weitz added.
Why is it incredible?
This image stands out, first and foremost, for its unusual appearance. Peaks and valleys ranging from a light sandy color to a deep blueish-gray create an almost hypnotic landscape.
And it is amazing that, with a picture taken by a robotic spacecraft orbiting a planet that lies millions of miles from Earth, scientists can trace through billions of years of that world's climate history.
Every rock, every valley and every winding, sandy, fragmented feature holds an incredible amount of information about the planet it belongs to. So, even just through images from orbit, scientists have been able to slowly piece together Mars' history and the incredible changes the planet and its climate have endured.
