NASA Mars Picture of the Day: Landslide!

Mars Global Surveyor Mars Orbiter Camera

MGS MOC Release No. MOC2-486, 17 September 2003

NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems

This August 2003 Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC)
image shows part of a deposit created by a landslide off the wall
of a crater near 12.3°N, 21.3°W. The crater wall is not
shown; it is several kilometers to the left of this picture. The
debris that slid from the crater wall came from the left/upper
left (northwest) and moved toward the lower right (southeast).
The crater floor onto which the debris was deposited has more
small meteor craters on it than does the landslide material; this
indicates that there was a considerable interval between the
time when the crater floor formed, and when the landslide
occurred. This picture covers an area 3 km (1.9 mi) wide.
Sunlight illuminates the scene 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.