Pits, flows, other scenes in new set of Mars images

Strewn boulders and rippled sand lie on the floors of two shadowy, steep-walled pits. Mounds in another region appear to be mud volcanoes, which may have brought fine-grained material to the surface from deep underground. In the Tharsis volcanic region, the intersection of a lava flow with a trough caused by ground collapse allows seeing whether the flow happened before or after the collapse.

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Two dark, rimless pits are located to the northwest of Ascraeus Mons in the Tharsis volcanic region of Mars. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

These and thousands of other images from HiRISE observations between Oct. 1 and Nov. 1, 2010, are now available on NASA's Planetary Data System (http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/) and the camera team's website (http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu).

The camera is one of six instruments on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which reached Mars in 2006. It has made more than 17,000 observations. Each observation covers an area of several square miles on Mars and reveals details as small as desks.

Provided by JPL/NASA