Martian Landslides May be Caused By Melting Ice and Salt Under the Surface

Eratosthenes and an anonymous IRC user report:

Martian landslides may be caused by melting ice and salt under the surface:

The NASA InSight mission has helped researchers determine that the planet experiences Marsquakes, making it seismically active.

And then there is the mystery of Recurring Slope Lineae, known as RSL, that have intrigued scientists for years. These RSL are a form of landslide on Mars, but no one knows what causes them, said Janice Bishop, author of a new study on the phenomena.

"We see them from orbit by the dark streaks they produce on the ground and they tend to always occur on sun-facing slopes, which led geologists to think they were related to melting ice early on," said Bishop, senior research scientist at the SETI Institute in California.

"The interesting thing is that they increase over months following dust storms and then fade away, and they appear to form repeatedly in the same regions. Also, a large number of these are forming in the equatorial part of Mars, where there is very little ice."

[...] These puzzling landslides have never been seen up close by a rover or lander, and until they can be investigated by a robotic explorer, scientists are using lab experiments and Martian analogs on Earth to try and understand them.

[...] "If our hypothesis is correct, then RSL could be indicators for salts on Mars and for near-surface active chemistry," Bishop said. "Most of us Mars scientists have considered modern Mars as a cold and dry and dormant place, shaped mostly by dust storms. This is certainly true of the surface, but our work shows that the subsurface could be much more chemically active than realized before."

Journal Reference:
J. L. Bishop, M. Yeilba, N. W. Hinman, et al. Martian subsurface cryosalt expansion and collapse as trigger for landslides [open], Science Advances (DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abe4459)

Original Submission #1 Original Submission #2

Read more of this story at SoylentNews.