The European Space Agency has released a new photo of the surface of Mars, which was taken earlier this month by the CaSSIS camera onboard the ESA/Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter.
The photo shows part of Argyre Planitia, in the vicinity of the Hooke Crater in the planet's southern highlands.
As the space agency explains in the picture's description, the scenery seen in the picture seems rather similar to what is known as Mars' “chaos terrain” - patches of surface that feature “haphazard groups of variously sized and shaped rocks” clumped together and “often enclosed within depressions”.
“While this small patch has not been defined as one of these, its appearance is certainly chaotic,” ESA notes.
The bluish wispy tendril-like shapes that can be seen in the picture are actually traces left by dust devils, whirlwinds of dust that occur both on Mars and on Earth; the colour of these shapes is the result of three filters that were combined to make the image.
Launched in 2016, Trace Gas Orbiter arrived at the orbit of Mars later that year and started its mission in 2018. Along with supplying images of the planet's surface, the craft is also expected to provide “data relay services” for the second ExoMars mission that is supposed to arrive at the Red Planet in 2023, as ESA points out.