NASA releases astounding image of landslides on Mars

NASA has released a new image of the Martian surface capturing a landslide. The image was taken in the Cerberus region of the planet, which is near the Elysium Mons volcano. The image shows the Cerberus Fossae.

These fissures are believed to be a result of the planet's crust tearing apart. Now, this area has become the home for active landslides, as shown in the image by bright blue boulders.

"Cerberus Fossae is a steep-sided set of troughs cutting volcanic plains to the east of Elysium Mons. Steep slopes on Mars have active landslides, also called 'mass wasting', and here we see evidence of two types of activity. First, the light bluish boulders on the slope appear to originate at a layer of bedrock, also light blue, near the top of the section," NASA said.

"Second, the dark think lines are recurring slope lineae, probably also due to mass wasting, but composed of finer-grained materials. This image was captured by the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter," the space agency added.

NASA said that the image merges two different exposures which were snapped on November 20, 2016, by the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera housed on the space agency's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

"The images were taken to calibrate HiRISE data since the reflectance of the moon's Earth-facing side is well known. For presentation, the exposures were processed separately to optimize detail visible on both Earth and the Moon."

"The Moon is much darker than Earth and would barely be visible if shown at the same brightness scale as Earth. The combined view retains the correct positions and sizes of the two bodies relative to each other. The distance between Earth and the moon is about 30 times the diameter of Earth."