This image of the floor of a crater located in the southern hemisphere of Mars shows numerous boulders between 1 and 10 meters in diameter.
The rocks are not randomly or evenly distributed, but “often arranged in linear or circular patterns,” the website for the HiRISE instrument, the high-resolution camera aboard NASA’s MRO orbiter, highlights in its commentary. who took the image on November 21.
Some of these patterns resemble the polygons often seen at high latitudes on Mars, which form from the seasonal expansion and contraction of ground ice.
Over many years, these processes can displace boulders and concentrate them at the edges of polygons. “If so, the previous polygons are no longer visible at this location, but the boulder patterns persist,” the HiRISE team says.
