PIA25353: Rapid Changes on the North Polar Cap
This image acquired on January 20, 2022 by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows rapid albedo (brightness) changes at this time of year (late northern summer) on the Martian polar cap.
 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_072594_2675 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA25353.tif (15.56 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA25353.jpg (1.285 MB)  

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The purpose of this sequence of images is to understand rapid albedo (brightness) changes seen at this time of year (late northern summer) on the Martian polar cap.

Our cutout is an animation that is a comparison with an image acquired just 5 days earlier from this one. Changes in relative brightness are apparent between the observations. It is not immediately obvious what is causing the changes, but the linear patterns suggest that wind is playing a role.

The map is projected here at a scale of 50 centimeters (19.7 inches) per pixel. (The original image scale is 63.4 centimeters [25.0 inches] per pixel [with 2 x 2 binning]; objects on the order of 190 centimeters [74.8 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:
2022-05-26