Bouncing Boulders on Mars

By Nancy Atkinson - March 30, 2009 at 4:48 PM UTC | Planetary Science
bouncing-boulders-on-mars.jpg

[/caption] Mars is not the dead world we once thought it was, and these images portray that fact. Stuart Atkinson (not a relative, but a good pal) is part of the

UnmannedSpaceflight.com

crew, the folks who have created fantastic visual treats from raw images sent back from our space exploring robots. Stu also has his own website,

Cumbrian Sky

. Today,

Stu posted some pictures on his website

, along with his story of how he came to create an utterly fantastic image from a rather ordinary-looking picture from the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaisaince Orbiter. After seeing Stu's handiwork today, I asked him if he wouldn't mind sharing his story on Universe Today of how he came to make an amazing discovery on Mars. (Click on the image above for a larger version.)

[caption id="attachment_28216" align="aligncenter" width="580" caption="HiRISE original image. Credit: NASA/JPL/U of AZ"]

[/caption] Stu said he found the image above on the "dangerously addictive"

Mars Global Data website

. The image, of the Aram Chaos region, didn't look very interesting at first. But then he zoomed in to get a better look at the "slumpy" feature in the middle of the image, and then zoomed in some more. "It looked like a section of the valley wall had come loose and slid down to the lower ground below," Stu said as he raised a Spock-like eyebrow... [caption id="attachment_28217" align="aligncenter" width="580" caption="Zoom in of HiRISE original. Credit: Stuart Atkinson"]

[/caption] There, he discovered the track of a huge boulder that had "fallen from the valley wall and tumbled down, bouncing and rolling and boinging along for a long, long way."

Adding color to the image really highlighted the tracks left by the bouncing boulder, and a few other tracks showed up as well, creating an absolutley awesome image and discovery!

"You know what I love about these images?," Stu wrote on his blog. "They show movement, they show that things are moving on Mars right now. It's not the dead, lifeless, corpse of a world I grew up with; it's a world - we now know - where dust devils whirl and twirl across the plains… where clouds drift through the pale pink sky… and where huge stones fall from high cliff face, fall to the ground below, then bounce and roll and crash over it… unseen by anyone."

"For now."

Great detective work, Stu! I propose that this region should be named after Stuart Atkinson (at least the boulders, if nothing else!)

Also, check out Stu's

pictoral history of the International Space Station,

starting from when it was a wee infant back in 1998 to the great images we've seen of the ISS this past week.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com