Images taken by NASA's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) show a "gully" on Mars.
The images were taken between November 2010 and May 2013 and show a "new gully channel on a crater-wall slope in the southern highlands of Mars," a NASA news release reported.
These types of gullies are common on Mars; they are most often spotted on the Red Planet's southern highlands.
These structures tend to have an alcove at its uphill end that feeds into a channel carrying Martian debris.
The new pair of images show that material flowed from an alcove after it broke away from its old route and started to carve out a brand new channel. The two images were taken more than one whole Martian year apart.
"Before-and-after HiRISE pairs of similar activity at other sites demonstrate that this type of activity generally occurs in winter, at temperatures so cold that carbon dioxide, rather than water, is likely to play the key role," the news release reported. That means the phenomenon could be all a result of dry ice.
The exact location of the gully is at 37.45 degrees south latitude, 222.95 degrees east longitude, in the Terra Sirenum region on the inner wall of a crater. In 2001 36.6 a gully was also captured in the Terra Sirenum crater at 36.6 degrees south, 161.8 degrees west. A comparison of images spanning until 2005 showing lighter contrasting material confirmed the formation of gullies in the crater.
"HiRISE is one of six instruments on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Science Laboratory projects for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington," the news release reported.
