HiRISE caught an avalanche in action! http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_007338_2640

It was so exciting to find this image! The image was intended to be part of a series of seasonal monitoring observations of a dune field. We’re watching to see how the winter carbon dioxide frost disappears as spring comes to the northern polar areas (which is pretty cool in itself! See PSP_007043_2650, for example.) PSP_007338_2640 happened to be the first image we took after powering back on after a safing event. So we were examining the image to make sure the camera was still working OK (it is – as you can see from this beautiful image & the many others we’ve taken since!). If it hadn’t been for that, we might not have noticed this for weeks! (In case you haven’t noticed, we have a LOT of images to look at! )

My first reaction was just, “What is that?” So I asked some of the scientists around HiROC, and they got excited, too. Everyone was talking about it all day, putting together ad-hoc color products (the full color processing takes a while to get through our processing pipelines) and looking at other images nearby for similar events. Because this was part of a series of images in the same spot, we had a “before” image as well (PSP_007140_2640). It’s a little hard to compare the two images because the bright carbon dioxide frost is changing as well, and we took the two images from different angles. But you can see in the second image that there are some spots up above on the cliff that are missing their bright frost covering. Perhaps that’s where the rock (or ice) fall started? The springtime sun is warming these icy layers, which could cause sublimation (solid ice changing to gas). Certainly there is a lot of dust being raised to form this big cloud, too, whether the dust was mixed in with the ice blocks, or just kicked up off the lower, dustier layers. As we continue monitoring this site and other polar areas, we’re sure to learn a lot more about the processes captured in this image.

ETA: Emily Lakdawalla made a great animation of the before/after shots, posted on the Planetary Society blog. So cool!

My new temporary daily routine here at HiRISE Operations:

1. Validate the image data that have arrived since last time I checked. Are the raw image files we receive gap-free and are the file sizes as expected? Did the Uplink team command the HiRISE camera properly? So far, they have a perfect record!
2. Keep checking to see if new data is arriving for processing.
3. Are our automated processes running properly?
4. Is the data being stored correctly and can the team access the images in the appropriate places?
5. Finally! Actually look at the new images. In between “oohs” and “ahhs” check to see that the images look good. Did our automated software handle the data correctly? Do I need to do any manual reprocessing of image data?
6. Report my findings to the team via email.
7. Get up and see what the scientists and other team members are up to.
8. Eat some Cheetos.
9. Repeat as necessary.
10. A million other tasks.
    

By the end of the day I am covered in Cheeto dust (joking) and amazed by some new vista of Mars (seriously).

What is it we find so amazing? I can only speak for myself, but in observation TRA_000823_1720, the boulders lying about casting shadows indicate just how “Hi” resolution the HiRISE camera can go. In the second observation – TRA_000825_2665 – the stack of water ice and dust layers and the patches of water frost make for a distinctive landscape. At this resolution, there is a marked difference between the north polar region on Mars and the pictures I have seen of the Earth’s own polar regions.

To me, this is the great joy of planetary science: seeing new vistas that are at once familiar and unfamiliar, and never, ever routine.