Mary-Louise Hoffman
NASA‘s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has spotted gullies on the Red Planet by using a high-resolution imaging science experiment camera that is built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.
U.S. scientists examined images captured by the spacecraft’s HiRISE optical system and found that Martian gully formations occurred during seasonal carbon dioxide freezing, NASA said Thursday.
“As recently as five years ago, I thought the gullies on Mars indicated activity of liquid water,” said Colin Dundas, a researcher at the U.S. Geological Survey.
“We were able to get many more observations, and as we started to see more activity and pin down the timing of gully formation and change, we saw that the activity occurs in winter,” Dundas added.
Dundas co-authored the latest HiRISE study published in the journal Icarus.
According to NASA, the publication will release a special issue that features research reports indicating the existence of liquid water on present-day Mars.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory oversees the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission, while the University of Arizona operates the HiRISE technology.
