European Mars orbiter spies crumbling crater 'soaked in layers of Martian history' (photo)
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.
A European Mars probe captured a stunning view of a Martian crater that's rich in many of the features that help scientists reconstruct the planet's dynamic history over billions of years.
The image, taken in October 2024 using the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on the European Space Agency's (ESA) Mars Express orbiter, shows a crumbling crater called Deuteronilus Cavus. It is "soaked in layers of Martian history," having been exposed to volcanic lava flows, erosion from liquid water, repeated freeze-thaw cycles that expanded its edges, and layers of wind-blown volcanic dust settling over time, according to a statement from the space agency.
Located in a transitional zone between the planet's rugged southern highlands and smoother northern lowlands, Deuteronilus Cavus is believed to originally have formed following an impact roughly 4.1 to 3.7 billion years ago, when Mars and other planets were being bombarded by huge numbers of asteroids and comets. Over time, the nearly circular 75-mile-wide (120 kilometers) depression has been eroded by water and ice, enlarging it to nearly twice its initial size.
ESA shared a fun "recipe" outlining the series of events that shaped the crater, offering valuable insights into the planet's climatic and geological evolution. For example, the presence of clay minerals indicates past interactions between volcanic materials and water, hinting at the possibility of ancient habitable environments, according to the statement.
This is further supported by channels cut through the crater's rim, likely formed by surface water flow or the collapse of weakened ground above draining subsurface water. Meanwhile, grooves in the crater rim suggest that ice once formed when Mars' axis tilted more sharply away from the sun than it does now.
Related Stories:
— Mars: Everything you need to know about the Red Planet
— Facts about ESA's Mars Express orbiter
— What happened to all the water on Mars? Here's why the debate continues
"The linear grooves indicate where boulders frozen into the base of a glacier were dragged along, gouging out the troughs visible today," ESA officials said in the statement. "Around the base of the crater's inner walls, we can see the smooth, tongue-shaped ends of rock-covered glaciers. These 'debris aprons' formed when ice mixed together with rocky debris along the crater walls during a period of glaciation, and slowly crept downslope."
The crater's interior also exhibits a mix of rock knobs, mesas, channels and plains, believed to be remnants of a collapsed central peak. Dark volcanic ash covers much of the crater floor, while surrounding wrinkle ridges mark ancient lava flows.
"This feature-rich crater has all the ingredients for exploring Mars' varied geological processes, giving us a tantalizing taste of its complex history," ESA officials said in the statement.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Post
2 hours ago
- New York Post
Unprecedented view of our neighboring Andromeda Galaxy revealed
A new composite image of the Andromeda Galaxy is offering an unprecedented view of our closest spiral galactic neighbor. Composed by NASA and international space partners, the image combines data from more than a dozen telescopes and ground-based observatories. Advertisement Located about 2.5 million light-years from Earth, Andromeda, which is also known as Messier 31m has been a focus of the space community for more than a century, with early observations dating back to at least 1923 by astronomer Edwin Hubble. A key focus of ongoing studies has been the galaxy's evolution and structure, which shares many similar features with our own Milky Way. The new imagery weaves together data from X-rays captured by NASA's Chandra telescope, the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton spacecraft and several other missions to create a unique view of the galaxy's features. 'Each type of light reveals new information about this close galactic relative to the Milky Way. For example, Chandra's X-rays reveal the high-energy radiation around the supermassive black hole at the center of M31 as well as many other smaller compact and dense objects strewn across the galaxy,' NASA stated. Advertisement 3 The Andromeda galaxy is located about 2.5 million light-years from Earth. FOX Weather 3 On a clear night, some stars of the galaxy can be seen from Earth. FOX Weather Unlike the Milky Way, which is difficult to observe from within due to dust, gas and Earth's position inside it, Andromeda can be studied from a great distance, offering astronomers a more complete and unobstructed view. Despite the insights revealed by this image, many mysteries remain about the spiral galaxy, including the composition of invisible dark matter, how it interacts with other cosmic structures and how many stars and planets it truly contains. Advertisement Andromeda is believed to contain hundreds of billions of stars, leading scientists to theorize that it could also host trillions of planets. 3 A key focus of ongoing studies has been the galaxy's evolution and structure, which shares many similar features with our own Milky Way. FOX Weather Even with an army of advanced space technology available today, no telescope is powerful enough to overcome the vast distance and identify a single planet, or, for that matter, even a star, in detail within Andromeda. Advertisement NASA says its upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is among several missions that will help continue to shed light on galaxies like M31. Named after the agency's first chief astronomer, the high-tech observatory is expected to launch in 2027 and will feature a field of view 100 times larger than that of the Hubble Space Telescope.
Forbes
2 hours ago
- Forbes
White House Could Jeopardize Mars Missions By Slashing NASA's Funding
The White House scheme to reshape NASA by slashing its funding could jeopardize future human flights ... More to Mars. Shown here is NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft - one of the three Mars orbiters set to be terminated under the president's plan. (Photo) With its radical reshaping of NASA's future by decimating its funding, the White House is imperiling the upcoming human missions to Mars that it purports to back. In a new masterplan for NASA—with a proposed budget that slits in half appropriations for planetary science endeavors—the president still states he aims to advance precursor flights to astronauts landing on Mars. Yet the plan paradoxically terminates funding for three of the five orbiters circling the Red Planet that have been pivotal to landing robotic explorers on Mars, and would be crucial to a safe human expedition. The orbiting stations, equipped with cutting-edge cameras to image spacecraft as they descend onto the Martian dunes, and powerful radio antennas to speed communications between rover-scouts and mission planners back on Earth, collectively make up the Mars Relay Network. This constellation played a central role in the latest NASA expedition to Mars, during the arrival of the robotic cameraman Perseverance and the first interplanetary helicopter Ingenuity, says Roy Gladden, manager of the Mars Relay Network at NASA's leading-edge Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena. The ring of spacecraft observing and mapping Mars, Gladden tells me in an interview, should actually be expanded to set the stage for American spacefarers to begin their first odysseys across the ancient volcanos and disappeared oceans of the mysterious orange-red orb. 'In the next few years, there is talk by many institutions and companies of sending many vehicles to the surface of Mars,' in the lead-up to astronaut flights, he says. 'Losing these [Mars Network] orbiters reduces our options for providing relay support to future missions.' One of the leading lights in NASA's Mars Exploration Program, Gladden has co-written a cascade of breakthrough papers on the Mars Relay Network that he oversees, its history in providing orbital beacons for NASA spacecraft as they approach Mars, and its potential to guide future space pilots to perfect landing sites. The Mars-encircling coalition of satellites represents a grand space entente between NASA and the European Space Agency, with the U.S. sending the Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and MAVEN spacecraft to circumnavigate the planet, and ESA deploying its Mars Express and ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter. The president's scheme would halt a grand space entente between NASA and European Space Agency ... More around Mars, and halt funding for ESA's Mars Express orbiter, part of the Mars Relay Network that has been pivotal to safe spacecraft landings on the Red Planet. AFP PHOTO/ ESA /Illustration by Medialab (Photo credit should read -/AFP via Getty Images) This orbital alliance 'represents a highly successful international collaboration and continues as critical infrastructure for NASA's and ESA's ongoing Mars exploration,' Gladden states in one paper he co-authored with vanguard space-tech scholars at JPL, which is affiliated with the California Institute of Technology, one of the top science universities in the U.S. But under the new blueprints for NASA sketched out by the White House, funding for two of the American orbiters, and one ESA spacecraft, would be terminated to recoup the minimal cost of their continued operations. In a preface to the White House's proposed draconian downsizing of the American space agency, its acting administrator, Janet Petro, concedes that NASA will be forced to cut away at its ranks of illustrious scientists. While professing 'to prepare for human missions to Mars,' Petro adds that NASA's slashed funding would likewise trigger halts to an array of Red Planet-focused science missions. So far, Gladden tells me, 'We have not yet received direction from NASA HQ to stop work on these [Mars Relay] projects, and we wait for further instruction.' Gladden's team says that even while roboticists and aerospace engineers at JPL were testing Perseverance and Ingenuity for their Mars quest, the orbiters helped mission planners 'select scientifically interesting landing sites and properly design the vehicle for successful delivery to the surface of Mars.' The Mars orbiters helped NASA mission planners select the perfect landing site for the Perseverance ... More rover and the first interplanetary helicopter Ingenuity to start exploring Mars. (Photo illustration by NASA via Getty Images) The flightpaths of two of these satellites were altered to pass over the target landing zone at the precise moment when Perseverance began its atmospheric entry and descent to the Martian surface, and the orbiters beamed the spacecraft's telemetry back to Earth, tens of millions of kilometers distant, in near real-time. With the help of these satellites, 'the events of the Perseverance landing were broadcast live from JPL to the world,' they say. This dual-planet livestream 'allowed everyone to share in the excitement (and 'terror') of the day.' 'The images returned thereafter included … video of the landing itself taken from a variety of vantage points, and eventually the historic images of the first powered flight on another planet.' The orbiters' high-resolution cameras had earlier mapped the ordained touchdown site, producing sophisticated atlases that enabled the AI-enhanced rover and rotorcraft—both equipped with computer vision—to navigate their alien surroundings the moment they began moving across the ghosts of waterways that once rushed through Mars. NASA's Perseverance rover landing safely on Mars. Mars orbiters imaged the entire descent and ... More touchdown of these robotic explorers, and could perform the same function for future astronauts (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Handout via Xinhua) (Xinhua/NASA/JPL-Caltech via Getty Images) Since then, the Mars satellites have acted as a super-speed web of cosmic messengers, passing data, imagery, software changes and commands between the Martian robotic scouts and their commanders across NASA. Yet if the White House scheme to axe three-fifths of the Mars constellation is executed, Gladden tells me, 'Shuttering [the orbiters] Odyssey and MAVEN would have significant impacts on the relay network.' 'Odyssey, operating in a sun-synchronous orbit that passes over the rovers at about 7 pm each day, is uniquely positioned to receive data from the rovers at the end of their work day.' 'The return of this data on that timeline facilitates next-day planning, which enables the rover teams to ensure that each day on Mars is a meaningful one.' MAVEN, he adds, 'has a very robust radio system. It can move more data than any of the other orbiters and actually holds the record for the most data returned from a single relay session.' 'Losing access to either (or both) of these orbiters would require the rover projects to slow down their operations and reduce the amount of data that can be returned from the surface of Mars.' That would threaten not only twin-planet communications with these robotic scouts, but also with any astronaut corps sent to Mars in the future. But if an alternative future emerges—one where NASA's Mars Exploration flights are instead revived with a new boost in financial backing, Gladden says, 'We can more intentionally build up the relay network to continue supporting the robotic exploration of Mars and hopefully be ready for human explorers.' The fantastical Mars orbiters can image the atmospheric entry and touchdown of spacecraft sent from ... More Earth, including those carrying future astronauts (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Handout via Xinhua) (Xinhua/NASA/JPL-Caltech via Getty Images) One of the Jet Propulsion Lab's foremost scientists says the futuristic outpost is still hoping against hope that the president's plan for NASA will be overturned by Congress. 'It is very, very important to understand that the budget process is not yet concluded.' 'Though the president's budget proposed the shuttering of these [Mars Relay] efforts,' he says, 'Congress has the final say in how much money is allocated to NASA.' 'They can itemize that budget to specifically reinstate missions that were zeroed out by the president's proposed budget.' 'This does occasionally happen,' he adds. There are already signs that the most powerful advocates of NASA retaining its position as the supreme global leader in spaceflight and in exploring the solar system could rally to overturn the president's plan to strip down the agency. The US Congress has the power to overturn the president's plan to radically downsize NASA, and save ... More the agency's world-leading planetary exploration missions (Photo by) Senator Ted Cruz, a longtime champion of NASA and its breakthroughs across the realm of space, recently introduced a special appropriations bill that would astonishingly add $9.99 billion to NASA's funding, which would allow it to catapult even higher ahead of the other world space powers. Cruz's White Knight legislation specifically provides $700,000,000 for the procurement of 'a high-performance Mars telecommunications orbiter that is capable of providing robust, continuous communications for … future Mars surface, orbital, and human exploration missions.' The senator's amazing lifeline to NASA also reverses a death sentence the president's plan placed on the colossal Space Launch System rocket and Orion space capsule - a sentence that was set to take effect after the Artemis III lunar mission that would land the first Americans on the Moon since the last millennium. Cruz's special appropriation would extend the lifetime of the SLS/Orion at least through the late 2020s. Back at JPL, Roy Gladden, torchbearer of the Mars Relay Network and of its future, says the $700 million outlined in Senator Cruz's NASA-rescue bill 'would be fantastic if that were to come around.' Cruz's NASA-wide boost, and the specialized allocation for orbital spacecraft around the Red Planet, could push forward the construction of a next-generation Mars relay constellation, he says, and the lofting of the first American discoverers to trek across the flame-colored planet. This future-tech version of the Mars Network, Gladden predicts, could in turn become the seed of a fantastical Solar System Internet that connects the Earth's eight billion citizens with the robots and aeronauts spreading out to explore all the planets and moons circling the Sun.
Boston Globe
5 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Here's another use for ice: creating secret codes
But the idea is more than an exercise in frivolity, said Mengjie Song, an expert in thermodynamics at the Beijing Institute of Technology and one of the lead authors of the new study, published June 18 in the scientific journal Cell Reports Physical Science. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'It is a totally new method for humans to record information,' Song said. In his view, there could be 'many, many applications around this work.' For instance, it could be used to help devise more accurate models for de-icing power lines, airplanes and high-speed trains. A clearer grasp of how ice bubbles form could also help scientists better understand the thermal and mechanical properties of bricks made from lunar soil, which could be used to build moon bases. (Scientists have been researching the possibility of fashioning bricks from Martian soil for almost a decade.) Trained to recognize patterns in ice bubbles, artificial intelligence could help study glaciers for clues about past climate patterns, or to identify potential deposits of natural gas. Advertisement Researchers acknowledged, however, that much more work would have to be done to make such applications feasible. 'Ice is an ancient substance that permeates every aspect of our lives,' Song said. 'There are many unsolved mysteries waiting for us to explore.' Advertisement Indeed, ice itself is something of a mystery. Covering about one-tenth of Earth's surface, ice continues to yield clues about the planet's distant past while pointing to a much warmer future. Ice can preserve ancient viruses. Ice can also sing. Bubbles form in ice when air becomes trapped during the freezing process. As water turns from a liquid into a solid, its molecules arrange into hexagons. Most of the gases are expelled during that phase transition, but some get stuck. 'Every time you take an ice cube out of your freezer at home, you will see that the outside might be clear but the inside of the ice cube is very opaque,' said Jochem G. Meijer, a postdoctoral scholar in fluid physics at the University of Chicago. 'This opaqueness is because a lot of tiny bubbles have been frozen in the ice.' Conversely, Meijer noted, a cocktail at a 'fancy bar' might be accompanied by bespoke ice cubes that are clear and bubble-free. 'Then you can be sure that they spent quite some money on it,' he said. Song and his colleagues carried out their experiment by freezing a sheet of water between two acrylic plates. They found that by changing the speed of freezing and the tilt of the plates, they could alternatively produce egg- or needle-shaped air pockets in the ice sheet. Those shapes could be rendered into Morse code, which relies on dashes and dots, or a computerlike code that uses either two or three different symbols. A camera captured the sequence of shapes, which were subsequently processed by a computer and translated into English letters and Arabic numerals. Advertisement 'The work is impactful overall,' said Jonathan B. Boreyko, a fluid mechanics expert at Virginia Tech. 'The level of control obtained for the ice bubble shapes and distributions is impressive.' Boreyko added that the experiment was a 'superb' means of directing public attention toward something many take for granted. Ice bubbles are already known to hold clues about the atmospheric conditions that prevailed when they were formed. 'We cannot only make a message, but we can know the message inside it,' Song said. For his part, Boreyko said that although ice bubbles would probably not replace text messages and tweets, the new findings were important. 'Science often works this way,' he said. 'We get surprised and captivated by a particular phenomenon, try to understand it out of pure curiosity, and then unexpected applications emerge downstream,' he said. Not all bubbles, maybe, are fated to burst. This article originally appeared in
