Features on the surface of Mars change over time for many reasons, but one process that’s universal to all planets is gravity.

We can see boulders and smaller rocks around the bases of most steep rocky cliffs. With HiRISE, we can compare two images and find new boulders that have broken off the cliff face and sometimes even see the trail that the boulder has left as it tumbled further downhill. Finding these new rockfalls with HiRISE is difficult as they’re small and the dataset is huge.

Recently, scientists have started using machine learning techniques to help find and catalog features like these. Understanding how often these rockfalls happen allows us to guess the age of the slopes. In this image we’re searching for new boulders at the bottom of Cerberus Fossae, a volcanic fissure that's thought to be quite young.

ID: ESP_085012_1900
date: 14 September 2024
altitude: 277 km

https://uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_085012_1900
NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
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