This image looks like the stump of a tree, but it is indeed a Martian crater. Its deposits date from a bygone era of the planet Mars.
Often, when we look at images of space, the shapes take on a funny meaning to our human eyes. It is common, for example, to see pareidolia — faces that appear in haphazard shapes. In a photograph of Mars released by the European Space Agency (ESA) on January 28, 2022, it is not a face that appears, but what looks like a tree stump.
It is obviously not the stump of a tree. It is quite simply a superb crater, about ten kilometers in diameter. The photograph was taken by the CaSSIS camera, on board the ExoMars orbiter (this is not the first spectacular photo sent back to us by the probe).
A crater covered in ice
The ESA is amused by the appearance of the crater itself: Tree rings provide photographs of Earth’s past climate, and while they formed very differently, the patterns inside this crater also reveal details of the Red Planet’s history. . »
And indeed, the crater is not only beautiful and original to look at: it is quite interesting from a scientific point of view. In its depths, it is filled with ice-rich deposits. These deposits, according to the ESA, come from a very old time of Mars, during which the inclination of the axis of rotation ” allowed ice deposits to form at lower latitudes than today “.
It is therefore a testimony of the Martian past: Just like on Earth, Mars’ tilt gives rise to seasons, but unlike Earth, its tilt has changed dramatically over long periods of time. Retracing these evolutions makes it possible to move forward on the question of a possible life, in the past, on Mars. Since the presence of water is potentially connected to life, tracing the evolution of the seasons through the Martian ages is part of this research process. One of ExoMars’ missions is to map the planet’s surface in search of places rich in icy water, such as this impressive ice-carpeted crater.
