ICE, ICE BABY: We definitely check in on what's going on on Mars from time to time, and recently, some photos from the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) offered some caught our attention.
What's shown in the photo above is a cross-section of underground ice. It is exposed at the steep slope. The scale's hard to gauge in the shot, but in the real (Mars) world, it's about 550 yards wide, and the wall drops down and away about 140 yards from the level ground shown in the top band of the photo. The blue is a color enhancement.
So far, MRO has found eight sites where thick deposits of ice beneath Mars' surface can be seen in the faces of eroding slopes. NASA scientists say the ice "was likely deposited as snow long ago. The deposits are exposed in cross section as relatively pure water ice, capped by a layer one to two yards (or meters) thick of ice-cemented rock and dust. They hold clues about Mars' climate history. They also may make frozen water more accessible than previously thought to future robotic or human exploration missions."
Obviously, having accessible ice on Mars could be a game changer for visiting astronauts. Fortunately, the sites are in both northern and southern hemispheres of Mars, at latitudes from about 55 to 58 degrees, which is equivalent to Scotland or the tip of South America, if they were here on Earth. In fact, "There is shallow ground ice under roughly a third of the Martian surface, which records the recent history of Mars," said the study's lead author, Colin Dundas of the U.S. Geological Survey's Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Arizona. "What we've seen here are cross-sections through the ice that give us a 3-D view with more detail than ever before."
The rendition is preliminary. A revised version might be provided in the first quarter of 2018.
In some of the ice masses, the exposed deposit of water ice is more than 100 yards thick. That's a lot of potential water. In fact, "Astronauts could essentially just go there with a bucket and a shovel and get all the water they need," said Shane Byrne of the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, Tucson, a co-author on the new report regarding the findings.
In other words, potentially a game changer!
MEANWHILE, ON JUPITER: A friend recently shared a stunning video of Jupiter via NASA's Juno probe.
The footage was from December 16 of 2017, over about a three hour time span. In the video, the orbiter approaches Jupiter down to an altitude of between 3,000 and 4,000 km near the equator.
The gentleman who composed the video, Gerald Eichstädt, explains, "In natural colors, Jupiter looks pretty pale. Therefore, the still images are approximately illumination-adusted, i.e. almost flattened, and consecutively gamma-stretched to the 4th power of radiometric values, in order to enhance contrast and color."
Video credit: NASA / JPL / SwRI / MSSS / SPICE / Gerald Eichstädt
JunoCam was built and is operated by Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego / California / USA.
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