From orbit, this landscape on Mars looks like a lacy honeycomb or cobweb. But the unusual polygon-shaped features were not created by Martian bees or spiders; they are actually formed by an ongoing process of seasonal change from water ice and carbon dioxide.
Polygonal dunes of Mars, as seen from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s HiRISE camera. Credit: NASA / JPL / UArizona
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s HiRISE (High-Resolution Science Experiment) camera has seen many shapes of polygons in the years since 2006, when it entered Mars orbit. The HiRISE research team says that both water and carbon dioxide in the solid form of dry ice play a key role in sculpting the surface of Mars at high latitudes. Water ice, frozen in the soil, divides the earth into polygonal shapes. Then, dry ice sublimating just below the surface when the ground warms in the spring creates even more erosion, creating channels around the landfill boundaries.
Landfills are formed over many years when ice near the surface shrinks and expands seasonally.
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Spring sails and polygons on Mars, as seen from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s HiRISE camera. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UArizona.
But this polygon-covered region shows even more spring activity, as evidenced by the blue fan-shaped elements. Scientists say the layer of translucent dry ice covering the surface develops vents that allow the gas to escape.
“The gas carries fine particles of material from the surface, further eroding the channels,” the team wrote on the HiRISE website. “Particles fall to the surface in dark fan-shaped deposits. Sometimes the dark particles sink into the dry ice, leaving bright traces where the fans were originally deposited. Often the vent closes, then reopens, so we see two or more fans coming from the same place but oriented in different directions when the wind changes. “
Detailed image of large-scale polygons on the crater floor caused by a drying process, with smaller polygons caused by thermal shrinkage inside. The central landfill is 160 meters in diameter, the smaller ones are 10 to 15 meters wide, and the cracks are 5-10 meters in diameter. Credit: NASA / JPL
Scientists are studying the Earth with polygonal patterns on Mars, because these characteristics help them understand the recent and past distribution of ice in the shallow subterranean surface, as well as provide clues to climatic conditions.
And Mars is not the only place with polygons. Landfills can be found in the Arctic and Antarctic regions of the Earth, and the flight of the spacecraft New Horizons in 2015 revealed landfills on Pluto.
In the center to the left of Pluto’s huge heart-shaped structure – unofficially called the “Tombaugh Regio” – is a huge plain without craters, which seems to be no more than 100 million years old and probably still formed by geological processes. This frozen region is located north of the icebergs of Pluto and is unofficially called Sputnik Planum (Sputnik Plain), in honor of the first artificial satellite on Earth. The surface seems to be divided into polygonal segments, which are surrounded by narrow troughs. You can also see elements that look like groups of mounds and fields of small pits. This image was obtained by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on July 14 from a distance of 48,000 miles (77,000 kilometers). Elements less than half a mile (1 kilometer) are visible. The blocked appearance of some functions is due to image compression. Credits: NASA / JHUAPL / SWRI
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