Skylight into Martian cavern?

Story: "Martian Crater With A Cave at the Center"
www.onorbit.com...

It's a genuine photo, no imaging anomalies,
probably natural -- but terrific resolution
of structures on small scale -- tens of meters.

The lesson here -- high resolution images of unexplainable shapes
on Mars really do get released routinely.

Originally posted by JimOberg
Story: "Martian Crater With A Cave at the Center"
www.onorbit.com...

It's a genuine photo, no imaging anomalies,
probably natural -- but terrific resolution
of structures on small scale -- tens of meters.

The lesson here -- high resolution images of unexplainable shapes
on Mars really do get released routinely.

Very interesting, caverns like this are the exact type of place we should be looking for life on Mars, excellent.

reply to post by JimOberg

The lesson here -- high resolution images of unexplainable shapes
on Mars really do get released routinely.

Unless it's something that would change the course of human history. Then suddenly NASA doesn't have the technological capabilities to get a high-res picture of it.

We see this on earth.....nothing new really

Okay, let me count the recent discoveries....

Temperate Climate (Part of the year..in sunlight, but the surface is Earth T-shirt weather SOME of the time anyway)
Possible flowing Liquid water on the surface
Confirmed Ice right at the surface
and this discovery....'confirmed' presence of subterranean caverns.

Can someone please tell me what we're waiting for here?? This isn't the moon or Europa where we're humans in an environment we have 0 survival options in. Mars is starting to take on the feel of being a hostile, but manageable place to be with some human ingenuity applied. Caverns, IF 100% confirmed, now give us our shelters pre-built and far stronger than anything Man could take up there.

Am I missing something really huge here?? If I'm not, perhaps someone can explain what is stopping us from sending serious efforts to establish a presence there? Surely we can find plenty of men and women who are trained or can be and have no qualms whatsoever about a 1-way ticket if that is what the first trips require??

Heck... China and India are planning their own Mars Missions. I guess I'll just have to wait until nations that still care about achieving great things, step up to do what we should have had done 20 years ago.

reply to post by JimOberg
Nice post Jim

It's a great image and likely shows the hole where all the Martian oceans vanished into. Here's one of the Martian plesiosaurs sneaking around...

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/a14a8d8d1011.jpg[/atsimg]

@ I'mABeliever & Lovesaconspiracy. It's great image. Is there any need to dismiss it or go down the conspiracy route? Here's an image that Hoagland managed to get hold of. It's a hi-res Mars image that he claims shows a life-form. It's obviously just shadows and paradoliea...

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/b7c77a46eb54.jpg[/atsimg]

Cool picture... it looks to me as if the slopes were formed by the ground collapsing underneath.. Do we have a scale for this photograph?

It would be interesting to see how big this is, also poses the question, how was it formed? we know from earth the majority of inderground caverns are formed by flowing water..

Cool... and creepy! the pic looks exactly like those pits that antlion larvae make, like this:



But on a MUCH larger scale

Originally posted by loves a conspiricy
We see this on earth.....nothing new really

well except it isn't earth... What did you want? A green head peering out?


ETA s&f OP lovely image! Why is Martian volcanic ash white? Is ours? I ought to look at some images of volcano's on earth tonight!

Originally posted by Misterlondon
Cool picture... it looks to me as if the slopes were formed by the ground collapsing underneath.. Do we have a scale for this photograph?

The story mentioned the hole diameter as about 35 meters and the floor depth below it, about half as much -- 20 meters.

What I find awesome is that we're now talking human scale -- we can imagine people or robots climbing down into that.

And if they are lava tubes rather than merely local subsidence, they are TUNNELS running in at least two directions a LONG way. Uncommaped tunnels -- because we've seen images of crater chains that are probably the result of ceiling collapse on other such lava tubes.

The relevance to this thread is that there seems to have never been any official reluctance to publish these images. What they get is what we see.

reply to post by Kandinsky

that looks like it out of
STAR WARS where hans solo was going to be
fed to that same looking thing by jaba the hut

reply to post by JimOberg
The larger image and sources are available for the naysayers too.

Full screen jpeg

Impact Themes (images)

A few members would love to go spelunking that cavern.

reply to post by Kandinsky


Looks like the floor of the hole has a darker material or sand, or it could be wet. Maybe that's a nice lake pool under there?

Crater or sinkhole and if sinkhole what deleted material below to cause sink also hard to tell but the material above seems not in the center. Just some outta box thinking. I say DUNE worms

reply to post by BIGPoJo
The next fly-by could be even better and add more information..

Later this year, HiRISE will acquire a second image to create a stereo pair. Seeing this feature in stereo will help us unravel the mystery of its formation.

Impact processes

One to keep an eye out for.

Originally posted by Kandinsky
The larger image and sources are available for the naysayers too.

Awesome!! Looking at the larger photo it's much more clear that we can't see walls, so it appears that the title of the thread is spot-on, there's a larger chamber under this and the hole is something akin to a skylight in the roof of it.

Thanks Jim, cool photo, whatever it turns out to be...

Originally posted by Kandinsky
A few members would love to go spelunking that cavern.

There are a few members I'd like to assist down into the cavern, in the spirit of adventure.

Well, to me it looks like an image straight down into the top of a Martian teepee, and that hole in the middle is where the smoke goes out when you're cooking up some Martian buffalo.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Hmm, i remember a couple of years back at school, we had a Russian man come in to talk about space and things in an assembly, and he told us about all the difficulties of getting to Mars and stuff, and how much things would need to get developed before it'd be safe. But i have to agree, more should be done to get us there.