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PIA20469: Summer Sand Dunes
 Target Name:  Mars
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)
 Spacecraft:  Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)
 Instrument:  HiRISE
 Product Size:  2880 x 1800 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  University of Arizona/HiRISE-LPL
 Other  
Information: 
Other products from ESP_044088_2640
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA20469.tif (15.56 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA20469.jpg (996.1 kB)

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Mars' permanent North Polar cap is ringed by sand dunes. In the winter and spring the dunes are covered by a seasonal cap of dry ice.

Here, we see the dark dunes in the summer, bare of seasonal frost. Two classic barchan dunes march across the rugged terrain. The long dark dune is crossing transverse aeolian ridges probably formed in a previous climate regime.

The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

Image Addition Date:
2016-02-24