Ancient clay-rich sediments near the Hellas Basin on Mars sit exposed between wind-blown dunes in a new image from the HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, published on Friday.
The sediments appear orangish, with polygonal fractures, in the enhanced-colour version, the University of Arizona’s HiRISE team said. They lie between dunes and patches of sand northwest of the giant Hellas Basin.
Alfred McEwen, the camera’s principal investigator emeritus, wrote the caption for the image. “This very recently-acquired image shows that the HiRISE camera still works well,” he said.
According to the team’s observation page, the orbiter took the image on 11 June 2026. It flew 256 kilometres above the surface at the time, and objects about 1.55 metres across show up in the picture.
The black-and-white image spans less than five kilometres, the team said. By comparison, the enhanced-colour strip is less than one kilometre across.
Hellas Basin and Greece
The Hellas Basin takes its name from Hellas, the classical Greek name for Greece. Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli first used the name in 1877, according to the Lunar and Planetary Institute.
Later, the International Astronomical Union adopted the formal name Hellas Planitia in 1973, according to the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature. The gazetteer lists the plain at about 2,300 kilometres across.
In the past, the Hellas Basin held a giant lake fed by several valleys, the European Space Agency said.
Back on Earth, Greek City Times has reported on Kokkinopilos, near Filippiada in Preveza. There, red clays create a landscape that resembles Mars.
Twenty years above Mars
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter entered orbit around the planet on 10 March 2006, the team said. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the mission, while the University of Arizona operates the camera, which Ball Aerospace built.
Since then, the camera has taken more than 100,000 images of Mars, the team said. It passed that mark on 7 October 2025.
Even so, one of its detectors, RED4, has worked only on and off since mid-2023 because of a hardware issue. As a result, some images have gaps in the middle and a narrower colour strip, the team said.
Source: Astrobiology
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