Marks On Mars' Dunes - Caused By Dry Ice? - Video

NASA turned an Earth dune into a dry ice 'slip and slide' to see how downhill flow features are forming on Mars. 

In the case of dry ice, the frozen carbon dioxide interacting with the sand, created a CO2 gas pillow for the ice to ride on

Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech

Earth from Space: Great Sandy Desert, Australia

In northwest Australia, the Great Sandy Desert holds great geological interest as a zone of active sand dune movement. 

While a variety of dune forms appear across the region, this astronaut photograph features numerous linear dunes (about 25 meters high) separated in a roughly regular fashion (0.5 to 1.5 kilometers apart). 

The dunes are aligned to the prevailing winds that generated them, which typically blow from east to west. 

Where linear dunes converge, dune confluences point downwind. When you fly over such dune fields—either in an airplane or the International Space Station—the fire scars stand out. 

Where thin vegetation has been burned, the dunes appear red from the underlying sand; dunes appear darker where the vegetation remains.

Image Credit: NASA, Expedition 35 crew. 

NASA Mars HiRise: Proctor Crater Dunes

An extract from a detailed NASA HiRise image of Mars.

The full image, a stereo pair of images and many more images of Mars can be found on the NASA HiRise website.

ESA Cassini: The two faces of Saturn moon Titan's dunes

Two different dune fields on Titan: Belet and Fensal, as imaged by Cassini’s radar. It also shows two similar dune fields on Earth in Rub Al Khali, Saudi Arabia. 

Fensal is at higher latitude and elevation than Belet and clearly shows thinner dunes with brighter and wider areas in between, suggesting less abundant dune material in this region.

Credits: NASA/JPL–Caltech/ASI/ESA and USGS/ESA

A new analysis of radar data from the international Cassini spacecraft has revealed regional variations amongst Titan's sand dunes. The result yields new clues to the giant moon's climatic and geological history.

Dune fields are common on Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, second only to the seemingly uniform plains that cover most of the surface.

They cover about 13% of Titan, stretching over 10 million sq km, roughly equivalent to the area of Canada. Thus they offer a large-scale insight into the moon's environment.

Though similar in shape to the linear sand dunes found in the deserts of Namibia or southern Arabia, Titan's dunes are gigantic by Earthly standards. They are on average 1–2 km wide, hundreds of kilometres long and around 100 m high.

However, their size and spacing vary across the surface, betraying the environment in which they have formed and evolved.

Another difference is that sand on Titan is not made of silicates as on Earth, but of solid hydrocarbons that precipitate out of the atmosphere. These then aggregate into millimetre-sized grains by a still unknown process.

Using radar data from the NASA–ESA–ASI Cassini spacecraft, Alice Le Gall, of LATMOS-UVSQ, Paris and NASA–JPL, California, and collaborators have discovered that the size of Titan's dunes is controlled by at least two factors: altitude and latitude.

The main dune fields on Titan are found in lowland areas. Dunes at higher elevations tend to be narrower and more widely separated, and the gaps between them appear brighter to Cassini's radar, indicating a thinner covering of sand.

This suggests that there is relatively little sand available at higher elevations to build dunes, while more is present in the lowlands.

In terms of latitude, the dunes on Titan are confined to its equatorial region, in a band between 30°S and 30°N.

However, they tend to become narrower and more widely spaced at northern latitudes. Dr Le Gall and colleagues think that this may be due to Saturn's elliptical orbit.

Titan orbits Saturn and so the moon's seasons are controlled by Saturn's path around the Sun. Because Saturn takes about 30 years to complete an orbit, each season on Titan lasts for just over seven years.

The slightly elliptical nature of Saturn's orbit means that the southern hemisphere of the moon has shorter but more intense summers.

As a result, in southern regions, surface wetness due to ethane and methane vapour in the soil is reduced.

The drier the sand grains, the more easily they can be transported by the winds to make dunes.

"As one goes to the north, the soil moisture probably increases, making the sand particles less mobile and, as a consequence, the development of dunes more difficult," says Dr Le Gall.

Southern Netherlands: Zeeland from space

The Netherlands: Along the southern coast of the Netherlands, sediment-laden rivers have created a massive delta of islands and waterways in the gaps between the coastal dunes.

In this false-colour composite, acquired on May 24, 2002, the darker the red shown, the more densely vegetated the terrain.

The light blue-green areas show bare land surface.

If you look closely you will see the series of dams and barriers erected to prevent catastrophic flooding in Zeeland.

This was started after 1953 when several thousand people were drowned when the sea surged to higher than normal levels. Because most of Netherlands lies 5 metres under sea level, a breach in the sea walls can have a devastating effect.