Polygonal Patterned Ground
From a distance, the floor of this crater looks like a giant honeycomb or spider web. The intersecting shapes, or polygons, commonly occur in the northern lowlands of Mars.
The polygons in this “patterned ground” are easy to see because their edges are bound by troughs or ridges covered by bright frost relative to their darker, frost-free interiors. Patterned ground on Mars is thought to form as the result of cyclic thermal contraction cracking in the permanently frozen ground.
Image cutout is less than 5 km (3 mi) across and the spacecraft altitude was 314 km (195 mi). For full observation details including images with scale bars, visit the source link.
www.uahirise.org/ESP_016641_2500
NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona
Polygonal Patterned Ground
From a distance, the floor of this crater looks like a giant honeycomb or spider web. The intersecting shapes, or polygons, commonly occur in the northern lowlands of Mars.
The polygons in this “patterned ground” are easy to see because their edges are bound by troughs or ridges covered by bright frost relative to their darker, frost-free interiors. Patterned ground on Mars is thought to form as the result of cyclic thermal contraction cracking in the permanently frozen ground.
Image cutout is less than 5 km (3 mi) across and the spacecraft altitude was 314 km (195 mi). For full observation details including images with scale bars, visit the source link.
www.uahirise.org/ESP_016641_2500
NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona