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When frozen carbon dioxide has melted in the summer, distinctive marks are revealed in the Martian landscape. These are known as “Araneidoform land”, because they look like spiders when they look from space. Some of these spider -shaped relief forms have more than a kilometer wide, and some have hundreds of legs. They are often found in swarms. The image above was taken by Mars’s recognition orbiter to see the southern hemisphere in 2009.
The processes that create these peak formations are not completely understood, although JPL is working to imitate the temperatures and pressures of Mars to recreate them.
The arrival of spring to Mars also brings strong winds, and it is believed that the characteristic spiral pattern of the polar lid on northern Mars has been created for many years by winds that blow from the center of the cap to its periphery. The spiral pattern is due to the Coriolis effect, which is when the rotation of a planet bends the course of the winds.
The darkest parts of the spiral are actually deep cannons, which have been cut for a long period by spring winds. The boreale chasma, which is visible to the right of the center of the polar cover in the image, is particularly spectacular. It is as long as the Grand Canyon (about 450 kilometers) and up to 2 kilometers deep.
The strong spring winds also move sand dunes on the Martian surface, as are the winds in the deserts on Earth.
The white things you see in the image are the frosts surrounding the high dunes, which remain static while they are frozen. When temperatures increase in spring and this ice melts, dunes will begin to move again due to wind action.
“As we have seen, the beginning of spring on Mars is very active. You could even say ‘explosive’, says Diniega. “I imagine it would be very noisy, with cracked and exploited things.”
This story originally appeared in Japan wired and has been translated from Japanese.
