ESA marked “extraordinary and chaotic” while publishing images taken by the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) spacecraft orbiting the Red Planet. The images captured reflect the Argyre Planitia region of the plains of Mars. In this region, the Martian surface has a structure shaped by the erosion brought by wild winds and looks really scary.
Scratch-like markings in the images reflect the Martian wind regime. “Perhaps the most striking feature here is the wispy, twisting branches running across the frame,” the ESA said recently. “These dark regions are caused by dust whirlwinds, called dust devils, which are created when warm air rapidly rises into cooler air. We call these formations the footprints of the devil.”
Image captured on February 1 by TGO’s Color and Stereo Surface Imaging System (CaSSIS) camera. It has been processed to highlight the mineralogy of the surface, so if we were looking at this landscape with the naked eye, these dust demon tracks would not actually appear in blue.
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