New Images of the Red Planet: A World Without Footprints

This close-up of Gullies at the edge of Hale Crater could be clues to a watery past. These new Mars pics were snapped by the High Resolution (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on August 3. It's one of several amazing new images from the Red Planet. The Orbiter has been studying Mars since 2006, and the new shots below add to a collection of over 1,500 taken by the HiRISE camera since April.

Sand Dunes in Aonia Terra

Many of the dune fields in this region of Mars are banked up against topographic obstacles such as crater rims. The location of the dunes within impact craters gives an indication of the average regional winds, while details such as slip-face orientations and superposed ripples are controlled by the present day local winds.

Rough Terrain

Many large impact craters surround this image, but there are no volcanoes nearby making it unlikely that the rough surface is from fresh, blocky lava flows.

The high-resolution image shown here reveals a few fresh, irregularly-shaped craters on top of this rough terrain. An irregular crater, approximately 600 meters (2000 feet) in diameter, is visible just right of center, about a third of the way up from the bottom of the image. Its shape suggests that it formed from a body that impacted the surface at a relatively low angle and slow speed. This makes it likely that it is a secondary crater (a crater that forms from debris blasted out of a nearby crater).

For more images click here

The University of Arizona and NASA

Comments

[ThankGodForAtheism]

The University of Arizona website is being hammered, downloading the collection in 1440 @ 3.6k :(

Regarding the pictures... As with most real pictures taken of space there are no words to describe them properly... I use the words "epic" and "amazing" far too often now we have probes orbiting other planets.

I have no idea if it's possible or not, but couldn't we get amazing pictures by aiming our most powerful telescopes (Hubble, LBT etc.) at close planets?

[afansaad]

I have seen some photos of Red Planet before but these are the different ones and quite interesting too.
http://www.hindlist.com

[claudio]

Magnificent images , BUT what is meant by "A world without foothprints " ???

Does this means 'no signs of intelligent species left over' ???

I tend to agree that Mars seems a death planet......what about if some humans will look from the ground ??

Consideration should be given also to the dust winds and storms that seem to cover everything on Mars.

The rather poor MAG field seems to indicate scarce abitability...water was likely gone and MIGHT be available underground.

Nobody expects to find recent remnants of intelligent species..I do NOT expect that.

Regards to the death Red planet

[Luis D Rey]

The University of Arizona is just LOOKING for AL GORE'S foot prints,
WHY Mars will or won't have foot prints?
WHY so much speculation when NO HUMAN has been there as yet?

[Sancrows]

Wow.
Thank god no human footprint.

[nepharous]

No footprints? Try looking a Cydonia and tell me that that is not the "footprints" of a long gone civilization. How about the glass like tubes that look like a transportation system found in JPL photos? There is more going on at Mars than we are being told.

[ThankGodForAtheism]

I reckon we will find things exceeding our expectations, whether that is evidence of life is a different matter.

And what's the deal with the comments and footprints? The headline was merely stating how pristine it looked, as in no Human has ever been there.

@nepharous: I checked all the pictures I could find of Cydonia but I couldn't find anything even resembling footprints, just lots of little pockmarks, larger craters and hills. Also, the face has already been proven to be a optical illusion, from any other angle it looks like a hill.
You will have to direct me to the pictures of "the glass like tubes that look like a transportation system" as I can't find them.

[nepharous]

To Thank god for Athiesm,
When using the term "footprint" I was refering to the environmental impact of a civilization such as buildings, roads etc, etc, not actual footprints. The face on Mars was re-photographed earlier this decade and evidence of "digital smearing" can be seen when viewed at very close range. The real test though is to find the symetry math of human faces in "Greys Medical Anatomy" and then compare that to the symetry of the "face" on Mars. Nature could not have randomly placed eyes, a nose and mouth distances so perfectly apart from each other. To really twist your noodle you should read the statements of NASA/JPL officials after the discovery of the face in 1976. The quote was that the face was photographed several hours after its initial discovery and was found to be a "trick of light". This is a lie due to the fact that the trejectory of the imaging orbitor would not go over Cydonia again for at least a month. Why would NASA/JPL have to lie about this? The orbital mathematics shows this comment to be a blatant lie. You can go to Youtube and look up "What is going on at Mars?" or "biology found on Mars". JPL has slowly leaked photos of a Mars that looks very much alive to me.

[ThankGodForAtheism]

The pictures taken in 2001 of the "face" are pretty conclusive that it is simply a hill with a resemblace to the human face. There are many, many examples on Earth where natural formation look man-made, and extremely well made at that. If you look enough at all the evidence I'm sure there could be conspiracy theories about almost anything... example: too much evidence in itself becomes a conspiracy theory for some people, finding a face on mars that was immediately "proven" to not be a face... COVER UP!!!
I'm not saying that is you, just an example of a reaction to things of this magnitude.

Regarding the "footprints", I am sorry I didn't pick up on the "", but I have seen many pictures of mars including all the high-res ones I can get my hands on, and have found only one thing that couldn't be explained as something other than it appears (we know there has been lots of glacial activity on Mars in the past, this could result in very unusual structures being carved); that being the pyramid...

Bottom picture on wiki page.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydonia_Mensae)

Talking about strange formations, I have absolutely no idea what could cause a fixed, hexagonal structure seemingly embedded 100km into the atmosphere of Saturn.

(http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2007-034)

(http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/newsreleases/newsrelease20070327/)

A structure like that could be used in many ways, I am hoping (upon hope) that it is some sort of exhaust, maybe for a civilisation that lives deep in Saturn's atmosphere, using it to pump their excess heat into space, but i'm sure we would have picked emissions like that up by now.

I will give them videos a look when I have the time, they look very interesting, thanks for the links.

ThankGodForAtheism