Migratory
birds and military aircraft often fly in a V-shaped formation. The “V”
formation greatly boosts the efficiency and range of flying birds,
because all except the first fly in the upward motion of air -- called
upwash -- from the wingtip vortices of the bird ahead. . In this image of a dune field on Mars in a large crater near Mawrth
Vallis, some of the dunes appear to be in a V-shaped formation. For dune
fields, the spacing of individual dunes is a function of sand supply,
wind speed, and topography. . This image was acquired by the HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter on Dec. 30, 2013. The University of Arizona,
Tucson, operates the HiRISE camera, which was built by Ball Aerospace
& Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for the NASA
Science Mission Directorate, Washington.
. > More information and image products Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona Caption: Alfred McEwen
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