Martian Cliffs of Ice | NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
The mid-latitudes of Mars are mostly covered with smooth material that scientists have long suspected to be ice. The ground is uniform and dusty and does not reveal many clues about what lies beneath the surface.
However, sometimes a feature, like a cliff, cuts through the terrain and gives us a glimpse of this buried icy material. The cliff in this image is one example out of a few dozen that are known.
The bright material on the cliff face is icy and is preserved only because the cliff points away from the equator, so it is shaded most of the time. Faint bands on the cliff might indicate layers in the ice that record variations in climate conditions. We do not know how much time this ice took to accumulate here, but studies elsewhere on Mars indicate that material like this is likely to be tens of millions of years old at least.
This HiRISE enhanced color camera image (less than 1 km in size) was captured by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) at an altitude of 251 km (~156 miles).
NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has spent over twenty years (2006-2026) orbiting the Red Planet, collecting valuable scientific data.
The University of Arizona, in Tucson, operates the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE). It was built by BAE Systems in Boulder, Colorado. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate (SMD), Washington.
Image Date: July 20, 2022
Release Date: July 25, 2026
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