NASA’s Mars Orbiter takes a stunning picture of icy sand dunes in the northern planes

NASA has released a new image, taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, showing stunning icy sand dunes within a 3-mile crater on the planet’s northern planes.

The photo, taken in February, reveals some detail about the formation of trenches on the Red Planet, taken as the ice melts with the changing seasons.

Some of the dunes in the field appear to be separated from the main group, NASA said, appearing to climb up the crater slope along a trench-like shape.

NASA’s Mars Orbiter has been imaging Mars since 2006, returning gigabytes of photos, and revealing new details about the ancient world.

This latest image was taken with the High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) camera of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, 196 miles above the surface of Mars.

It shows a ‘field of sand dunes’ in an ice-covered crater in the high latitudes of the northern planes of the Red Planet, revealing gullies likely formed by melting ice.

The surface of the main dune area is covered with a series of dark-hued polygonal patterns. These could be the result of a seasonal frost process, NASA said.

Several of the steeper dune slopes, pointing downwind, contain narrow grooves that suggest the beginning of gullying. Possibly from the melting ice.

One of the main purposes of the orbiting spacecraft is to find evidence that water once flowed over the surface of the Red Planet, for how long, and whether it did so in sufficient quantity and long enough to develop life.

Discovering evidence of melting ice and the formation of trenches adds to the scientific understanding of the planet.

The crater floor contains a variety of textures, including those covered with lobes, in addition to striped patterns that indicate seasonal thaws caused by sublimating ice.

Wide downward movements of materials on the crater slopes opposite the dune field superficially resemble gullies, NASA said.

Except they are generally not defined by distinctive niches, cut channels, or sediment aprons seen in gullies elsewhere on the planet.

This has left open questions about exactly how they formed, what they are, and why they appear to be different from trenches elsewhere on Mars.

Future orbiters, as well as work by the likes of the Curiosity and newcomer Perseverance rover, will help answer some of these questions.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has six different instruments on board that can study every level of the Red Planet, including subterranean layers.

NASA hopes to make it work until at least 2030, as it has been used to return data from both rovers, plus it could run even longer.

It was used to record Perseverance’s landing phase as it surfaced, and to reveal the rover as a ‘little dot’ on the expansive orange surface.