Giant Lava Spirals Wreck Mars Ice Valley Theory

Martian Lava Spirals

Mars scientists are frantically regrouping after grad student Andrew Ryan with the help of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter photographed what appeared to be huge spirals carved into the Lava flows in many of valleys on Mars. Scientists have had a long-running debate over whether water or volcanoes formed part of the red planet's landscape.

Andrew Ryan, A researcher at Arizona State University, may have been the first to spot this new form of lava flow — shaped like coils of rope — near the equator of Mars. They are new just to Mars however. Similar coiled lava structures have been observed on the Big Island of Hawaii and in submarine lava flows near the Galapagos Rift on the floor of the Pacific Ocean.

Ryan discovered the coiled lava structures in the Athabasca Valles nears Mars' equator - then continued his study by doing analysis on more than 100 high-resolution images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Ryan states that the spirals range in size from 16 to 100 feet wide and could not have been formed by ice-or water-related processes.

Thanks to long time listener Dan for the article

Ottawa Citizen article          Science Daily

NASA's MRO Finds New Craters

In 2010, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's low resolution B&W camera (called the Context-Camera) saw a dark patch that hadn’t been there two years before. The MRO was told to train it's high resolution (HiRISE) camera on the area and found a cluster of four brand new impact craters.
From the Wired Science blog:

• The telephoto image revealed four distinct craters, each ringed with a dark blanket where soil was blasted out in the impact. The crater quartet could have been formed by a single meteorite that broke apart on its way through Mars’ atmosphere.

The MRO finished it main objectives in 2008. NASA extended its lifetime twice. In that time, MRO has transmitted more data to Earth -- 131 trillion bits and more than 70,000 images so far -- than all other interplanetary missions combined.

Wired Science article

Phoenix Lander arrives and is healthy!

The Mars Phoenix Lander parachutes down to Mars on Sunday, in this image captured by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. As you can see in the B&W image from the MRO the lander is clearly visible below the parachute as it nears the surface. The next photo This is one of the first images captured by the Phoenix lander, showing the vast plains of the northern polar region of Mars. Peter Smith, of the University of Arizona at Tucson and principal investigator for the Phoenix mission noted that the ground looks like the "active surface of the Arctic regions of Earth." Cracks in the soil show that surface is "active" because no dust or sand has filled in the cracks. over the next few days, the lander's 7.7-foot robotic arm is scheduled to begin functioning. The robotic arm is set to collect the first soil samples in about a week. The lander is expected to function for about 90 days with energy generated by the solar panels.

Mars orbiter spots rover on weird plateau

Shaun Saunders sends in this cool article and photo of one of the Martian rovers as photographed by the Mars Orbiter. His comments are just as interesting though. Shaun wrote "The above link is interesting for me in that it raises a new line of inquiry: have lunar orbiters imaged & photographed apollo landing sites and the mission hardware left behind?"


Here is part of the article copy from MSNBC

NASA's sharpest-eyed orbiter at Mars has spotted the Spirit rover far below, sitting on an enigmatic rock formation nicknamed "Home Plate."


and I am thinking.....damn, I would really like to see some of the Luna landing sites.....where are those pics anyway?

pic NASA / JPL / Univ. of Ariz

Martian trinity could bring red planet alive.

Three large Martian volcanoes -- the Tharsis Montes -- Arsis Mons, south of the Martian equator, Pavonis Mons on the equator, and Ascraeus Mons to the north -- may only be dormant, not extinct. And outgassing from them could stir the chilly vichyssoise of Mar's primordial soup into action!

NASA Photo:

A team of researchers led by Dr. Jacob Bleacher -- jointly of Arizona State University and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md--have discovered that, unlike planet Earth's moving crust, where volcanoes erupt as the crust move over stationary plumes of magma, then flicker out as the crust moves on past that "hot spot", Mar's crust is stationary; the magma must come to the Mountain. The researchers posit horizontal flows of lave are moving beneath Mar's stationary crust.

"We finally have pictures with enough detail from the latest missions to Mars, including NASA's Mars Odyssey and Mars Global Surveyor, and the European Space Agency's Mars Express missions," Bleacher said.

Conjecture: should the three volcanoes cook off, enough greenhouse gas _could enter_ the Martian atmosphere to warm enough to liberate some h2o into becoming at least, surface slush.
(Thanks to Shaun Saunders for bringing this to my attention)

A Mars-orbiting spacecraft has spotted a subterranean natural plumbing system that might have ferried water beneath the surface of the red planet in the distant past.

New images taken by the HiRISE camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) show hills and plateaus with alternating layers of dark and light colored rocks in Candor Chasma, one of several canyons that make up Valles Marineris, a sprawling Martian rift valley that is longer than the contiguous United States and up to seven times deeper than the Grand Canyon in places.

The timing of the flow remains uncertain, and could have occurred many millions or even billions of years ago.

Researchers suggest that liquid flowing through the fractures deposited iron-rich or clay-like minerals in the rock. The minerals would act like cement to strengthen the layers of rock and also bleach it a lighter color. Over millions of years, wind stripped away the top layers of surface rock, exposing the subsurface and its plumbing system to the light of day.

posted by Shaun A. Saunders