NASA Mars Picture of the Day: Exhuming Craters 09-13-2004

Mars Global Surveyor Mars Orbiter Camera

MGS MOC Release No. MOC2-848, 13 September 2004

NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems

This Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC)
image shows about two dozen circular depressions, each with
a circular mesa on its floor. These were once meteor impact
craters. The craters were filled with layered material, buried,
and then exhumed and eroded. The dark, elliptical feature
in the lower left (southwest) corner of the image is a butte
composed of the layered rock that once completely covered the
craters in this image. These landforms are located in a
depression eroded into the floor of a much larger, partially-filled
impact crater located
near 35.1°S, 356.5°W.
The image covers an area approximately 3 km (1.9 mi) across
and is illuminated by sunlight from the upper 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.