NASA Mars Picture of the Day: Small Impact Crater 10-03-2003

Mars Global Surveyor Mars Orbiter Camera

MGS MOC Release No. MOC2-502, 3 October 2003

NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems

This May 2003 Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC)
image provides a high resolution view (1.5 meters—5 feet—per
pixel) of a small meteor crater near 28.0°N, 182.8°W.
This crater is about 300 m (~980 feet) across, just under one-third
the size of the famous Meteor Crater in northern
Arizona, U.S.A. Boulders ejected by the impact dot the scene.
Sunlight illuminates the crater 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.