According to Science Alert, many things can leave holes in the rocky terrain of Mars: more than half a million meteorite impacts have left craters; collapsed lava tubes have formed deep pits; ancient floods have carved huge cracks; Volcanic activity melted the ice, leaving funnels behind.
Although the entire surface of Mars is covered with all kinds of depressions and craters, a circular depression found in the melted “Swiss cheese terrain” seems to have some strange features. The average hole depth is deeper, which has scientists trying to find out what caused it.
It’s summer at the Martian south pole, and the sun is low enough in the sky to accentuate shadows on the feature and make subtle features stand out, but there are still a few rays of light that can reveal the ice at the bottom of the cave. Around the crater are visible patches of frozen carbon dioxide. The circles in the ice are thought to be where dry ice sublimates into gas in the summer sun, leaving behind what scientists call the “Swiss Cheese terrain.”
The image was taken with the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE camera, on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which allowed researchers to zoom in between about 200 and 400 kilometers (about 125 to 250 miles), see objects larger than 1 meter (about 3 feet) on Mars. This means that below 50 centimeters (19.7 inches) per pixel, the pit is not so tiny, seen as a feature several hundred meters across. So the question is, did something punch through the ground, or was it some sort of collapse?
MRO has been orbiting Mars since March 2006, returning detailed images of the Red Planet’s surface that reveal a dynamic environment where dust storms roam, dune-crawling, and occasionally send technological debris collect dust. Strange things are constantly being discovered on Mars, which has been bringing surprises to humans.
