Planet Mars: South Pole Water Ice Deposits | NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

Planet Mars: South Pole Water Ice Deposits | NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

A wide variety of south polar terrains are on display in this spectacular HiRISE color image. The reddish material in the upper two thirds of the image is the South Polar layered deposits (SPLD). These deposits are a stack of layered, dusty water ice. Scientists believe that these layers record previous climatic conditions on Mars, much like terrestrial ice-sheets provide a record of climate change on the Earth.

This image shows the face of one of the many scarps or shallow cliffs that cut into the polar layered deposits. These scarps expose the internal layers within the SPLD.

This is a non-narrated clip with ambient sound. The image is less than 1 km (under 1 mi) across and the spacecraft altitude was 248 km (154 mi). 

This image was captured by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) using the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) instrument. 

Malin Space Science Systems built the Mars Color Imager (MARCI), Context Camera (CTX) systems for MRO.

The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., 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.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Duration: 3 minutes, 32 seconds

Release Date: Dec. 20, 2022

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