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Wind Flow

Feb. 5, 2019
This image acquired on December 5, 2018 by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, shows ripples in the sand which tell us which way the wind was moving and how it was diverted around these rock formations.
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The atmospheric pressure on Earth at sea level is about 1 bar. On Mars, the pressure is 6 to 10 millibars, or 1/100th that of our planet. But even in this atmosphere, wind still flows around obstacles.

In this image the ripples in the sand tell us which way the wind was moving and how it was diverted around these rock formations.

The map is projected here at a scale of 25 centimeters (9.8 inches) per pixel. [The original image scale is 26.2 centimeters (10.3 inches) per pixel (with 1 x 1 binning); objects on the order of 79 centimeters (31.1 inches) across are resolved.] North is up.

This is a stereo pair with ESP_057864_1720.

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

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