New Images of the Red Planet: A World Without Footprints

This close-up of Gullies at the edge of Hale Crater could be clues to a watery past. These new Mars pics were snapped by the High Resolution (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on August 3. It's one of several amazing new images from the Red Planet. The Orbiter has been studying Mars since 2006, and the new shots below add to a collection of over 1,500 taken by the HiRISE camera since April.

Sand Dunes in Aonia Terra

Many of the dune fields in this region of Mars are banked up against topographic obstacles such as crater rims. The location of the dunes within impact craters gives an indication of the average regional winds, while details such as slip-face orientations and superposed ripples are controlled by the present day local winds.

Rough Terrain

Many large impact craters surround this image, but there are no volcanoes nearby making it unlikely that the rough surface is from fresh, blocky lava flows.

The high-resolution image shown here reveals a few fresh, irregularly-shaped craters on top of this rough terrain. An irregular crater, approximately 600 meters (2000 feet) in diameter, is visible just right of center, about a third of the way up from the bottom of the image. Its shape suggests that it formed from a body that impacted the surface at a relatively low angle and slow speed. This makes it likely that it is a secondary crater (a crater that forms from debris blasted out of a nearby crater).

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The University of Arizona and NASA