WASHINGTON, Dec. 29 (UPI) — NASA scientists recently came upon a unique image while reviewing photography captured by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera on the agency’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
The image features strewn boulders in the wake of a sizable landslide. NASA featured the landslide as its Image of the Day on Tuesday.
In the photo, the rubble from the collapsed canyon wall can be seen book-ended by two signature features — the scarp and the toe. The scarp, seen to the right, is the relatively featureless arc of light-colored dust and soil that marks the beginning of the slide. It is relatively free of boulders compared to the adjacent ridge above and wreckage below. The toe, to the left, is the arc of lighter-colored soil at the end of the slide, where the topography flattened and the rubble finally came to rest.
Scientists say the landslide is relatively fresh, as the boulders can be seen in bright contrast to the surrounding dusty landscape — not yet incorporated into the main deposit below.
“Additionally, while several small impact craters are visible in the landslide lobe, they are smaller in size and fewer in number than those on the surrounding valley floor,” NASA researchers wrote.
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