NASA Mars Odyssey THEMIS Image: Craters Filling Craters

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Context image credit: NASA/Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) Team
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In today’s image the large crater retains its original

bowl shaped interior and the radial surface pattern on the

ejecta. Just to the south is a crater that has been infilled

by ejecta from the larger crater. The overlapping of ejecta

blankets can be used to get relative age relationships, in

this case the smaller crater to the south formed first, and

the larger crater formed sometime later.

[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