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Project Progress

Slope streaks are gravity driven mass movements that actively form in the dust covered regions of Mars today. They have received renewed attention from astrobiology, because of the recent discovery of terrestrial analogs in the Dry Valleys on Antarctica, where slope streaks are caused by melting of seasonal frost patches.

This project involved targeted image acquisition with the Mars Orbiter Camera on board the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft and image surveys. We looked at how slope streaks have changed since seen as early as 1977 in Viking Orbiter images. The work yielded refined knowledge about the formation of new slope streaks, the first observation of slope streak fading, and the discovery that bright slope streaks form from old dark slope streaks. Two undergraduate students David Gremminger and Lisa Tatsumi were involved in this research, who both received Space Grant Fellowships. The results of this work are described in an upcoming paper: N. Schorghofer, O. Aharonson, M.F. Gerstell, and L. Tatsumi. Three decades of slope streak activity on Mars. Icarus, in press (2007).

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