{ "title": "Honeycomb Mars", "authors": "HiRISE", "metadata": { "thumbnailURL": "https://static.uahirise.org/anews/2020-06-29/ESP_016641_2500.jpg", "excerpt": "The intersecting shapes, or polygons, commonly occur in the northern lowlands of Mars." }, "version": "1.5", "identifier": "ESP_016641_2500", "language": "en", "layout": { "columns": 10, "width": 1024, "margin": 85, "gutter": 20 }, "documentStyle": { "backgroundColor": "#faf7f2" }, "components": [ { "role": "heading1", "layout": "heading1Layout", "text": "HiPOD: 29 June 2020" }, { "role": "divider", "layout": "bigDividerLayout", "stroke": { "width": 3, "color": "#8c2028" } }, { "role": "title", "layout": "halfMarginBelowLayout", "text": "Honeycomb Mars" }, { "role": "photo", "layout": "fullBleedLayout", "caption": "An enhanced color cutout showing a network of polygonal terrain. Less than 1 km across. (NASA/JPL/UArizona)", "URL": "https://static.uahirise.org/anews/2020-06-29/ESP_016641_2500.jpg" }, { "role": "body", "format": "html", "layout": "hipodMarginLayout", "text": "
From a distance, the floor of this crater looks like a giant honeycomb or spider web. The intersecting shapes, or polygons, commonly occur in the northern lowlands of Mars.
The polygons in this “patterned ground” are easy to see because their edges are bound by troughs or ridges covered by bright frost relative to their darker, frost-free interiors. Patterned ground on Mars is thought to form as the result of cyclic thermal contraction cracking in the permanently frozen ground.
ID: ESP_016641_2500
date: 13 February 2010
altitude: 314 km
NASA/JPL/UArizona