Status Report

NASA Mars Picture of the Day: Exhuming Crater in Northeast Arabia

By SpaceRef Editor
December 3, 2003
Filed under , , ,

Mars Global Surveyor Mars Orbiter Camera

MGS MOC Release No. MOC2-563, 3 December 2003




NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems

The upper crust of Mars is layered, and interbedded with these layers
are old, filled and buried meteor impact craters. In a few places
on Mars, such as Arabia Terra, erosion has re-exposed some of the
filled and buried craters.
This October 2003 Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC)
image shows an example. The larger circular feature was once a meteor
crater. It was filled with sediment, then buried beneath younger
rocks. The smaller circular feature is a younger impact
crater that formed in the surface above the rocks that buried the
large crater. Later, erosion removed all of the material that covered
the larger, buried crater, except in the location of the small crater.
This pair of martian landforms is
located near 17.6°N, 312.8°W. The image covers an area 3 km
(1.9 mi) wide and is illuminated 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.

SpaceRef staff editor.