NASA Mars Odyssey THEMIS Image: A Crater Split In Two

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Context image credit: NASA/Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) Team
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A 22 km-diameter crater has been sliced by the tectonic forces that produced the rift known as Sirenum Fossae. The orientation of this rift is roughly radial to the great Tharsis volcano Arsia Mons, probably indicating a link between the formation of the rift and the volcano. Note how the rift cuts through a jumble of mounds on the floor of the crater. This indicates a sequence of events beginning with the formation of the crater followed by an infilling of material that was then eroded into the mounds and ultimately split open by the shifting martian crust.

[Source: ASU THEMIS Science Team]

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA’s Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) was developed by Arizona State University, Tempe, in collaboration with Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing. The THEMIS investigation is led by Dr. Philip Christensen at Arizona State University. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, is the prime contractor for the Odyssey project, and developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and from JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Arizona State University