Martian Vistas

     Seasonal carter wall flows, Mars (credit: JPL, NASA, MRO HiRISE)

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) with its HiRISE camera system. HiRise that made over 50,000 orbits over Mars since arriving at the Red Planet 15 years ago. The hi-resolution mages of Mars have shown remarkable detail of the planet's landforms. An early series of digital photographs of crater walls show dark streaks that grow during the summer and stop appearing during the winter. The streaks called recurring slope lineae could represent evidencd of hyper-saline water seeping from the crater's walls or to be something else entirely. A video was produced using many of the HiRISE images showing how austere but fascinating the Martian landscape appears. WHB

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