Cave Skylights Found Above Martian Underground Spaces
“They are cooler than the surrounding surface in the day and warmer at night,” said Glen Cushing of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Astrogeology Team and of Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Ariz. “Their thermal behavior is not as steady as large caves on Earth that often maintain a fairly constant temperature, but it is consistent with these being deep holes in the ground.”
A potential underground habitat on Mars has instantly become a search for Martian caves overnight throughout the red planet. This is due to NASA’s Mars Odyssey recently finding entrances to seven possible caves on the slopes of a Martian volcano, according to recent reports by NASA. The skylights appear very dark in the images, while the diameter of the one called “Annie”is double the length of a football field.
Taken by the orbiter’s Thermal Emission Imaging System developed by Arizona State University, in collaboration with Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing, images have demonstrated that there are seven openings on the northern slope of a high Martian volcano named Arsia Mons. The thermal images show that “Annie” is warmer than the shadows of nearby pits to the north and south, yet is cooler than sunlit surfaces.
What sets the skylight apart for NASA is when the information was gathered it was found that the hole is cooler during the afternoon than its surrounding surfaces, while at night it was warmer than the surrounding surface. According to NASA, this thermal imaging was expected from an opening that would go down into underground space. Some of the images were taken in visible-wavelength light, while others were taken in thermal infrared wavelengths. Each image took a picture of a different type of image, to represent a different aspect of the opening.
The dark, nearly circular cavern openings ranged in diameter from approximately 328 to 820 feet, as demonstrated by NASA’s Mars Odyssey along with the Mars Global Surveyor orbiters. The daytime and nighttime temperatures of the circular openings were evaluated from the Odyssey’s infrared camera to check both night and day temperatures, causing NASA scientists to conclude that the openings could be to underground spaces. “Whether these are just deep vertical shafts or openings into spacious caverns, they are entries to the subsurface of Mars,” said co-author Tim Titus of the U.S. Geological Survey in Flagstaff. “Somewhere on Mars, caves might provide a protected niche for past or current life, or shelter for humans in the future.”
This entry was posted on Thursday, September 20th, 2007 at 3:19 pm and is filed under Mission History, Mission Objectives, Space Agency News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
