The HiRISE team met up this summer in Whitefish, Montana. In between meetings, we were also able to take several geologic field trips and hikes. Glacier National Park has many cool (haha) glacial features, of course, and we also learned about some interesting sedimentology that occurred in the ancient geologic past. The patterns we saw in the sedimentary rocks are similar to those discovered by the Mars Opportunity Rover – cross-bedding and festooned ripples that form when sand is laid down under a body of water. The shape and direction of the ripples can tell you how much water was present, how fast it was flowing, and whether it was a river, a lake, or an ocean. These are important questions we’d like to answer about the history of water on Mars.

The park also has wonderful examples of glacial geology. HiRISE has taken images of many features thought to be related to glaciers, so it’s important to understand the terrestrial analogs that lead scientists to think these are evidence of flowing ice on Mars. For example, we hiked along a moraine composed of jumbled rocks the Grinnell Glacier left behind as it flowed downhill. In addition to the remains of the (rapidly disappearing) glacier itself, we also saw typical glacial erosional structures such as U-shaped valleys, hanging valleys, and cirques. For a HiRISE image of cirque-like features, see PSP_005730_1405.

On one of our field trips, we were accompanied by reporter Michael Jamison of The Missoulian. This story was on the front page of the paper the following day:

I thought the story was really good – a quirky (but so are we!) description of why we would want to stare at the rocks in such a magnificent setting, and their relevance to our mission to Mars. We all thought it was funny when he called Alfred McEwen, our Principle Investigator, a “Marsman”!

HiRISE Team in Glacier National Park, in front of a classic U-shaped valley carved by glacial erosion.

We’re in the midst of another HiRISE team meeting here in Tucson. I can’t believe it’s been almost two years since the team meeting I blogged about here. There are a few new faces, but mostly familiar friends that we’ve worked with for years by now. Our two newest Targeting Specialists are meeting the science team for the first time. (They’re actually not that “new” any more – they started last June, but this is their first team meeting.) Some of the other new folks are students and post-docs who are working on interesting research projects using HiRISE data. There are also a few people from JPL here at the meeting, who we talk to on the phone and email often, but we’ve never actually met face-to-face before.

Today during the meeting we are getting updates on all the Science Themes. Our images are divided into groups according to the geologic process that we hypothesize occurred. For each of these themes, a Science Theme Lead is assigned. These “STLs” are Co-Investigators or postdocs who are experts in that area. For example, the Volcanic Processes theme contains images intended to explore phenomena related to volcanism, such as inflated lavas, water-lava interactions, volcanic pits and cones, and mysterious types of collapse features such as the one shown in the anaglyph to the left. As you can read in the caption for that image, we’re still not sure how this feature formed. There are several different possibilities. The image was originally placed in the Impact Processes theme because that was one hypothesis. However, after seeing the high resolution image and stereo data from HiRISE, formation by a meteor impact doesn’t seem as plausible. Collapse after loss of material beneath the surface, such as magma or water, is a better fit to our observations.

I had the opportunity to attend the 40th annual meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society. It’s being held here in Ithaca, NY at Cornell University. Along with some beautiful fall weather, I’ve also enjoyed some fantastic science. The meeting started with the Mars sessions on the first day. I think every single talk about the planet’s surface used HiRISE data! An entire session was devoted to the Martian atmosphere, which was interesting because I’m not as familiar with that. It’s also been great to see what’s going on in the rest of the solar system – I’ve been pretty Mars-oriented since starting with HiRISE, so I’ve loved hearing about things like the lakes on Titan, progress in exoplanet studies, and changes in Jupiter’s Great Red Spot.

As usual, other blogs are covering the meeting well (Planetary Society and the Martian Chronicles, for example). In addition, the sessions are all being web-streamed live (links to streaming video here; full program here). I think this afternoon’s special sessions are going to be really interesting, so I recommend watching them. I’m especially interested in the mission highlights from the rovers, Phoenix, MESSENGER, Cassini, and Kaguya. We’ve already seen some results from Kaguya and MESSENGER in the individual sessions – exciting stuff!

A number of our science team members are at LPSC, the annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, this week. This is a big gathering in Houston, Texas, where members of the planetary science community share their work from over the last year. Unfortunately, we don’t have an active blogger there, but I wanted to point out some other people sending out excellent reports about HiRISE science.

The Martian Chronicles has two great articles about presentations given by HiRISE Team Members: Spiders on Mars, from our Deputy PI Candice Hansen (more about this topic here, under “Spring at the South Pole of Mars”); and Layers and Swiss Cheese, which mentions two HiRISE people, Kathryn Fishbaugh and Shane Byrne. The polar group has been very active in helping to plan and target images, and their results are really cool (ha, ha!).

Star Stryder has also been at LPSC, with lots of stories through the week. The post Pingos, Polygons and other Puzzles mentions two types of Martian landforms I know members of our team are studying in HiRISE images, although there aren’t many specifics about their LPSC presentations. For some visuals to go along with the story, here are some HiRISE images of possible pingos and plentiful polygons.

I also thought their reports on speeches by the NASA bigwigs were very interesting: NASA Administrator Mike Griffin telling young scientists not to specialize in the face of changing funding priorities, and Alan Stern discussing possible MSL delays.

So, check out these reports, and if you see any other good ones, add a link below in the comments! Hopefully we’ll get more as the week progresses.