Planet Mars: Waxing & Waning Winds | NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

Planet Mars: Waxing & Waning Winds | NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

The Hellespontus Montes is a rugged mountain range located on the western rim of one of the largest impact basins in the Solar System—Hellas Basin. The 7-kilometer depth of Hellas and its location in the Southern Hemisphere form an active atmospheric system that directly impacts local landscape evolution. This image was captured by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) using the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) instrument. MRO has orbited the Red Planet since 2006.

Hellespontus has a large accumulation of sand dunes and other wind-created bedforms that have been migrating on a continual basis since HiRISE began imaging Mars. A dune's steepest area, called a "slip face," indicates the down-wind side of the dune and its migration direction as driven by local winds. At this location, there are many dunes influenced by eastward winds that were draining into Hellas. Meanwhile, other locations show that migration had shifted towards the opposite direction to the west. In certain cases, we see these opposing dune directions in proximity. The complex patterns are not due to winds that are constant in magnitude or direction, but rather they wax and wane over the course of the Martian.

“For 17 years, MRO has been revealing Mars to us as no one had seen it before,” said the mission’s project scientist, Rich Zurek of JPL.

More About MRO

JPL manages MRO for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Caltech, in Pasadena, manages JPL for NASA. The University of Arizona, in Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., in Boulder, Colorado.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Release Date: April 13, 2023

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