Cavernous findings from Mars
By Ron Cowen
Images taken by a Mars-orbiting spacecraft show what appear to be cave entrances on the Red Planet. By sheltering organisms from such hazards as ultraviolet radiation and micrometeoroid bombardment, caves “could be among the only places on Mars to find evidence of past or present microbial life,” says Glen Cushing of the U.S. Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Ariz.
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He and his colleagues identified seven possible skylight entrances to caverns in pictures recorded by a visible-light-and-infrared camera on the Mars Odyssey spacecraft. They presented the findings in March at the annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston.