NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Spacecraft has spotted a mysterious circular landform on the surface of the Red Planet that looks like a deformed waffle or the surface of the human brain.
The bizarre-looking terrestrial feature spans nearly 2 kilometers wide and is located in Mars' Athabasca region. While scientists are not yet certain on what this circular landform really is and how it was created, they have speculations.
Experts at the NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) said that volcanic activities on the Martian planet can be attributed to the creation of the land feature. After all, the landform, which appears to be a circular island at the center of smooth lava flows, is found in Athabasca region which has Mars' youngest lava flows.
The region is also dotted with rings and small cones numbering thousands known to have been created as steam exploded through lava flow.
Scientists theorize that lava may have flowed beneath the newly discovered mound. The mound is suspected to have a significant amount of ice and the lava may be responsible for pushing up that particular spot. The distinct texture of the landform was likely formed when the ice has melted.
"Perhaps lava has intruded underneath this mound and pushed it up from beneath. It looks as if material is missing from the mound, so it is also possible that there was a significant amount of ice in the mound that was driven out by the heat of the lava," JPL said.
There is actually an array of similar enigmatic features in the region spotted and documented by instruments observing and conducting studies of the Red Planet. Many Martian features continue to baffle scientists but for the newly spotted Athabasca mound, researchers hope that close inspection of the landform's image as well as those of the surrounding areas could shed light on what created the texture spot.
The image was taken by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera, one of the six instruments it has onboard.
The HiRISE camera is made up of a 0.5 m in aperture reflecting telescope, the largest for any of the current deep sea missions providing it with the capability to take pictures of Mars with resolutions of 0.3 meter per pixel. HiRISE can basically see the Red Planet close up and this could help scientists glean more valuable information about Mars.
