HiRISE periodically images the InSight lander region in case anything changes, such as the appearance of new dust devil tracks. InSight has detected many passing atmospheric vortices, but they do not necessarily disturb the surface sufficiently to create a new track visible from orbit.

The cutout (with the the lander in the upper left corner) was given a “hard” stretch, saturating the brightest and darkest regions, to better detect subtle dust devil tracks. There are several southeast-to-southwest trending streaks to the east of the lander that may be from dust devils, but they were also present in a prior HiRISE image acquired about one month earlier, so they did not form in the past month. The bright spot next to the lander is a specular reflection from the smooth hemispherical cover over the seismometer.

ID: ESP_062884_1845
date: 26 December 2019
altitude: 273 km

https://uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_062884_1845
NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
#Mars #science #NASA