NASA Mars Picture of the Day: Exhuming Landforms
Mars Global Surveyor Mars Orbiter Camera
MGS MOC Release No. MOC2-1262, 26 October 2005
 NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems |
This Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) image shows a crater and adjacent terrain that have been exhumed from beneath a wind-eroded material. The sharp, pointy ridges inside and immediately adjacent to the crater are the remains of a material that once covered the entire scene. Wind has stripped these materials away, forming yardangs. Inside the crater, the erosion has revealed an older, eroded layered material. This smooth-surfaced layered feature inside the crater was already eroded to nearly its present shape before the yardang-forming material was deposited (and then eroded away). |
Location near: 7.2°N, 156.4°W |
Image width: ~3 km (~1.9 mi) |
Illumination from: lower left |
Season: Northern Winter |
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.
