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Dunes in Hellas

Dec. 22, 2022
This image acquired on October 23, 2022 by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows a dune field, located along the western margin of Hellas Planitia, the floor of a giant depression in the Southern Hemisphere of Mars.
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This beautiful dune field is located along the western margin of Hellas Planitia, the floor of a giant depression in the Southern Hemisphere of Mars.

Scientists on the HiRISE team take multiple pictures of the same dune fields on the Red Planet to see if they can detect subtle changes that would indicate if the dunes are moving. Some Martian dune fields do shift and move under the present day environmental conditions, but at a rate that is typically much slower than dunes move on Earth.

The map is projected here at a scale of 25 centimeters (9.8 inches) per pixel. (The original image scale is 26.0 centimeters [10.2 inches] per pixel [with 1 x 1 binning]; objects on the order of 78 centimeters [30.7 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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