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Drag Folds in the North Polar Layered Deposits

June 1, 2016
These North Polar layered deposits, composed of ice, captured by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft, show what looks like drag folds, where rock layers bend (fold) before they break in a fault.
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This image shows what looks like drag folds, where rock layers bend (fold) before they break in a fault.

However, the North Polar layered deposits are composed of ice, and this is a large scale for such a feature, compared to drag folds on Earth. This image is part of a stereo pair, so with a 3D picture, we can better interpret the structure.

This is a stereo pair with ESP_044794_2620.

The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

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