NASA Mars Picture of the Day: Crater Cluster

Mars Global Surveyor Mars Orbiter Camera

MGS MOC Release No. MOC2-521, 22 October 2003

NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems

This Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC)
image shows a cluster of impact craters in northwest
Arabia Terra near 30.4°N, 13.7°W. This group of
craters may have formed either by secondary impact of debris
thrown out of a larger meteor crater, or by the break-up
and impact of many fragments from a single incoming object.
The picture covers an area 3 km (1.9 mi) wide and is illuminated
by sunlight from the lower left.

Malin Space Science Systems and the California Institute of Technology
built the MOC using spare hardware from the Mars Observer mission.
MSSS operates the camera from its facilities in San Diego, California.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Mars Surveyor Operations Project
operates the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft with its industrial
partner, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, from facilities in Pasadena,
California and Denver, Colorado.