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PIA24917: Utopia Planitia
This image acquired on July 25, 2021 by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, shows bumpy and pitted ground in the Utopia Planitia region.
 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_070298_2145 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA24917.tif (5.191 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA24917.jpg (1.311 MB)  

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

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Map Projected Browse Image
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The Utopia Planitia region contains many distinctive landscapes. The bumpy and pitted ground in this image may have formed through the eruption of either lava or mud onto the surface from deep underground.

Mud volcanoes on Earth provide oases for life. If these features also formed through the eruption of mud, these landforms may hold clues to possible life-supporting oases in Mars' distant past.

The map is projected here at a scale of 50 centimeters (19.7 inches) per pixel. (The original image scale is 58.8 centimeters [23.1 inches] per pixel [with 2 x 2 binning]; objects on the order of 177 centimeters [69.7 inches] across are resolved.) North is up.

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

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Image Addition Date:
2021-10-19