Skip to main content

Otherworldly Mars image shows ripples sculpted by dust devils

The European Space Agency (ESA) has released a hauntingly beautiful image of the surface of Mars, showing how the landscape there is sculpted by winds.

The image, taken from orbit by the ESA and Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), shows the Hooke Crater area in the southern highlands of Mars. The false colors are due to the filters used by TGO’s CaSSIS camera, which looks in the infrared wavelength to capture more details of the surface mineralogy.

A fascinating and otherworldly landscape near Hooke Crater in Mars’ southern highlands.
Chaotic mounds, wind-sculpted ripples, and dust devil tracks: This image shows a fascinating and otherworldly landscape near Hooke Crater in Mars’ southern highlands. The image was taken by the CaSSIS camera onboard the ESA/Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) on February 1, 2021, and shows part of Argyre Planitia, centered at 46.2°S/318.3°E. ESA/Roscosmos/CaSSIS

This unusual-looking scenery is par for the course on Mars, where the thin atmosphere, high winds, and large amounts of dust combine to create striking features on the surface.

Recommended Videos

“This type of scenery is similar to ‘chaotic terrain’: A kind of broken, disrupted terrain seen across Mars where haphazard groups of variously sized and shaped rocks — irregular knobs, conical mounds, ridges, flat-topped hills known as mesas — clump together, often enclosed within depressions,” the European Space Agency explains. “There are around 30 regions of chaotic terrain defined on Mars (see ESA Mars Express views of Ariadnes Colles, Pyrrhae Regio, and Iani Chaos for just a small sample); while this small patch has not been defined as one of these, its appearance is certainly chaotic.”

Close-up image of the false-colored contrast (blue) indicating whorls from dust devils and canyons.
ESA/Roscosmos/CaSSIS

When seen up close, you can see the blue-tinted tendrils stretching out across the image. These are the tracks of dust devils, whirlwinds which are like tiny tornadoes and are common on Mars. When hot air at the surface of the planet rises quickly through cooler air above it, it forms an updraft that can begin to rotate and create a dust devil. This spinning column of air travels across the planet’s surface, leaving the distinctive tracks, before petering out.

ESA notes that the tracks seen in this image appear to travel on a north-south orientation, which could be the result of local winds blowing in that direction. Learning more about the <artian weather, including its winds, is the major focus of one of the instruments aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover. The MEDA instrument collects data on wind speed and direction, temperature, humidity, and the amount of dust in the atmosphere in order to better understand the martian weather system.

Georgina Torbet
Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…
NASA’s Mars Odyssey Orbiter just reached a major milestone
NASA's Mars Odyssey Orbiter.

NASA's Mars Odyssey Orbiter NASA

NASA’s Mars Odyssey Orbiter is one of seven currently circling the red planet (three of them belonging to NASA), capturing imagery and performing tasks from way up to help scientists learn more about the fourth planet from the sun.

Read more
Gorgeous Webb image of Serpens Nebula shows a strange alignment
This image shows the centre of the Serpens Nebula as seen by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam).

The Serpens Nebula, located 1,300 light-years from Earth, is home to a particularly dense cluster of newly forming stars (about 100,000 years old), some of which will eventually grow to the mass of our Sun. Webb’s image of this nebula revealed a grouping of aligned protostellar outflows (seen in the top left). These jets are identified by bright clumpy streaks that appear red, which are shock waves caused when the jet hits the surrounding gas and dust. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, K. Pontoppidan (NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory), J. Green (Space Telescope Science Institute)

This stunning new image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows the famous Serpens Nebula, a dense star-forming region where new stars are being born amid clouds of dust and gas. Unlike some other nebulae, which are illuminated by radiation from stars that causes them to glow, this is a type called a reflection nebula, so it only shines due to the light that reflects from other sources.

Read more
Auroras and radiation from solar storms spotted on Mars
The specks in this scene were caused by charged particles from a solar storm hitting a camera aboard NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover. Curiosity uses its navigation cameras to try and capture images of dust devils and wind gusts, like the one seen here.

The specks in this scene were caused by charged particles from a solar storm hitting a camera aboard NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover. Curiosity uses its navigation cameras to try and capture images of dust devils and wind gusts, like the one seen here. NASA/JPL-Caltech

The recent solar storms caused epic events here on Earth, where auroras were visible across much of the globe last month. These storms, caused by heightened activity from the sun, don't only affect our planet though -- they also affect Mars. NASA missions like the Curiosity rover have been observing the effects of solar storms there, where the very thin atmosphere creates a potentially dangerous radiation environment. If we ever want to send people to visit the red planet, we're going to need to learn more about this radiation and how it's affected by events like solar storms.

Read more