Of Popular Mechanics
-
Some regions on the surface of Mars are covered in giant structures called Megaripples.
-
Planetary scientists have long thought that these structures were stagnant.
-
Now, thanks to images taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, they have been shown to move.
Mars is a windy place. We know there are semi-regular dust storms. (RIP, Opportunity.) And just like Earth, the planet harbors wind-swept features like sand dunes and ripples. This can be challenging terrain if you are a rover, helicopter, or Mark Watney.
🌌Explore the galaxy with us.
In some places, the surface of the Red Planet is covered in massive wave-like structures called megaripples. Scientists first observed the structures in the early 2000s, but assumed they were stagnant features, their shapes locked in perpetuity.
Now, researchers have discovered that these giant waves of sand may not be stagnant after all. They are made up of coarse grains that slide down the Martian surface, Science reports.
“Here we show the first evidence of the movement of bright megaripples on Mars showing that some of these bed forms may be active today and do not require past climatic states for their origin as previously assumed,” the team, led by Simone Silvestro of the The National Institute of Astrophysics in Naples, Italy, writes in its article in the JOurnal of Geophysical Research Letters: Planets.
Scientists examined data from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which launched in 2005, to take a closer look at the features. They studied 1,400 megaripples at two sites: the McLaughlin crater and a site in the Nili Fossae region. The team found that megaripples moved an average of 3 inches per year over the course of 7.6 years at McLaughlin and 9.4 years at Nili Fossae.
That the megaripples moved to all It was a shock. “None of us thought the winds were strong enough,” said planetary geologist Jim Zimbelman of the Smithsonian Institution’s Air and Space Museum. Science.
It turns out that the Martian winds cause a kind of chain reaction. Once a grain falls, it can knock down others, which can slowly move an entire dune through a geological process called impact-driven drag. However, winds strong enough to set these grains in motion are quite rare. Identifying how often features move helps paint a clearer picture of the surface winds from Mars.
On-site observations are critical, but Earth researchers are working to answer some of the same questions. Some scientists, such as those who run the Mars vacuum chamber at the Spanish Astrobiology Center, have gone so far as to recreate the storms that occur on Mars.
Vacuum chambers like Mars “answer many questions about Mars or other related planetary bodies, both scientifically and technologically,” said Jesus Sobrado, who leads the technical development of the vacuum chamber, in a 2014 statement. .
This work helps researchers get an even better idea of what environmental conditions might be like on Mars. The wind has been a cause for concern for upcoming robotic and human missions.
You might also like
