NASA showing off more than 1,500 new images of the surface of Mars, taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRise) camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
This image, according to NASA's terse caption, is of potential high-temperature mineral deposits in the Terra Tyrrhena Knob.
We may know Mars as the Red Planet, but many of the HiRise images are studies in blue. NASA titled this one "Putative Paleolake"--a name suggestive of the theory that liquid water once could be found on Mars.
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been circumnavigating its namesake planet since early 2006. It sent back its first high-resolution image in March of that year.
Titled "Translucent Ice," this image is a reminder that the Mars Phoenix Lander in June 2008 uncovered a white substance that scientists believed must be ice. In November, using a surface-penetrating radar, the orbiter spotted what could be glaciers of water ice on Mars.
This batch of HiRise pictures was taken between April and early August of this year.
NASA says this image shows possible hydrate-rich terrain. The HiRise camera can show details as small as 1 meter across, even though the orbiter it's riding on is somewhere between 125 and 250 miles above the surface. Like human eyes, HiRise operates in visible light, but it also works at near-infrared wavelengths to investigate mineral groups.
Dry gullies show an edge of the Hale crater, which is in the southern portion of Mars.
NASA says "interesting SHARAD feature." To which we might reply "spooky, even."
Sharad, by the way, stands for "shallow subsurface radar." One of six science instruments on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter along with the HiRise camera, it uses radar waves within a 15- to 25-megahertz frequency band to penetrate up to 1 kilometer into the crust of Mars in the hunt for liquid or frozen water.
Here, in brighter colors, we see sinuous ridges in Northeast Meridiani Planum.
This is a image of a layered alunite-kaolinite mineral deposit.
