This image of the Centauri-Hellas Montes region was taken by the Compact
Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) at 2107 UTC (4:07
p.m. EST) on Jan. 9, 2007, near 38.41 degrees south latitude, 96.81
degrees east longitude. CRISM's image was taken in 544 colors covering
0.36-3.92 micrometers, and shows features as small as 20 meters (66 feet)
across. The region covered is slightly wider than 10 kilometers (6.2
miles) at its narrowest point.
Narrow gullies found on hills and crater walls in many mid-latitude
regions of Mars have been interpreted previously as cut by geologically
"recent" running water, meaning water that flowed on Mars long after
impact cratering, tectonic forces, volcanism or other processes created
the underlying landforms. Some gullies even eroded into sand dunes, which
would date their formation at thousands to millions of years ago, or less.
In fact, Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) images showed two of the gullies have
bright deposits near their downslope ends - but those deposits were absent
in images taken just a few years earlier. The bright deposits must have
formed within the period 1999-2004.
Has there been running water on Mars so recently? To address that
question, CRISM and MRO's other instruments observed the bright gully
deposits. CRISM's objective was to determine if the bright deposits
contained salts left behind from water evaporating into Mars' thin air.
The high-resolution imager's (HiRISE's) objective was to determine if the
small-scale morphology was consistent with formation by running water.
This CRISM image of a bright gully deposit was constructed by showing
2.53, 1.50, and 1.08 micrometer light in the red, green, and blue image
planes. CRISM can just resolve the deposits (highlighted by arrows in the
inset), which are only a few tens of meters (about 150 feet) across. The
spectrum of the deposits barely differs from that of the surrounding
material, and is just a little brighter. This difference could simply be
explained by a slightly greater content of dust than in the surrounding
soil. In contrast, older deposits elsewhere on Mars ( such as Valles
Marineris) that do contain hydrated salts have distinctive spectral
features near 1.9 and 3.0 microns. The gully deposits lack these features,
and exhibit no evidence for water-deposited salts. Just-published HiRISE
images of this and other bright gully deposits do not rule out water, but
they do suggest that the bright deposits could also have formed by dust
that slid downslope and accumulated in the gullies.
The Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) is one of
six science instruments on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Led by The
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, the CRISM team
includes expertise from universities, government agencies and small
businesses in the United States and abroad.