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Icy Cliffs on Mars

Jan. 21, 2022
This image acquired on November 2, 2021 by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, shows an area on the western edge of Milankovic Crater on Mars, that has a thick deposit of sediment covering a layer rich in ice.
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Larger image for PIA25088
Context Image
Larger image for PIA25088

This area, on the western edge of Milankovic Crater on Mars, has a thick deposit of sediment that covers a layer rich in ice. The ice is not obvious unless you look in color.

In the red-green-blue images that are close to what the human eye would see, the ice looks bright white, while the surroundings are a rusty red. The ice stands out even more clearly in the infrared-red-blue images where it has a striking bluish-purple tone while the surroundings have a yellowish-grey color.

The ice-rich material is most visible when the cliff is oriented east-west and is shielded from the sun as it arcs through the sky to the south.

The map is projected here at a scale of 25 centimeters (9.8 inches) per pixel. (The original image scale is 30.8 centimeters [12.1 inches] per pixel [with 1 x 1 binning]; objects on the order of 93 centimeters [36.6 inches] across are resolved.) North is up.

The University of Arizona, in Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., in 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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Mission
Target
  • Mars
Spacecraft
  • Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)
Instrument
  • High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE)
Credit
NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

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