This image shows terrain northeast of Martz Crater in the southern
highlands of Mars. It is a landscape dominated by impact craters, scarps
and ridges. The plethora of craters and the overprinting of younger
craters on older craters indicate that this is an ancient surface.
Curvilinear ridges called "wrinkle ridges" are common landforms on Mars.
They form when layers of rock and sediment break and fold under
compression. Multiple wrinkle ridges are captured in this image, the most
prominent of which is a curving structure oriented approximately
north-south. A 2.8-kilometer-wide (1.7-mile-wide) impact crater is
superimposed on this north-south wrinkle ridge. Gullies, perhaps carved
by water or muddy debris, are visible inside this crater. They are partly
in shadow, but can be shown clearly by adjusting the contrast of the
full-resolution image. Several of the smaller craters in this image
contain dune fields, which attest to the presence of wind-blown sediments.
In the lower portion of the image a few cliffs or scarps can be seen.
While their origin is uncertain, they may have formed by some combination
of flowing water and mass wasting.
If one looks carefully at this image, it is possible to find horizontal
blurred zones about 100 pixels tall. During these times the spacecraft
was executing a test of how much the motion of another instrument would
shake the spacecraft. These blurred regions also introduce geometric
distortions, so the match between the three CCD images utilized for this
observation is sometimes poor. The MRO spacecraft includes a
high-stability mode that should minimize these problems.
This image was taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment
(HiRISE) camera onboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft on
March 25, 2006. The image is centered at 33.66 degrees south latitude,
145.97 degrees east longitude. It is oriented such that north is 7 degrees
to the left of up. The range to the target was 2,485 kilometers (1,544
miles). At this distance the image scale is 2.49 meters (8.17 feet) per
pixel, so objects as small as 7.5 meters (24.6 feet) are resolved. In
total this image is 15.01 kilometers (9.33 miles) or 6,045 pixels wide
and 57.27 kilometers (35.59 miles) or 23,024 pixels long. The image was
taken at a local Mars time of 07:30 and the scene is illuminated from the
upper right with a solar incidence angle of 78.7 degrees, thus the sun was
about 11.3 degrees above the horizon. At an Ls of 30 degrees (with Ls an
indicator of Mars' position in its orbit around the sun), the season on
Mars is southern autumn.
Images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment and additional
information about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are available online at:
http://www.nasa.gov/mro or http://HiRISE.lpl.arizona.edu. For information
about NASA and agency programs on the Web, visit: http://www.nasa.gov.
JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena,
manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA's Science Mission
Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems is the prime
contractor for the project and built the spacecraft. The HiRISE camera
was built by Ball Aerospace and Technology Corporation and is operated by
the University of Arizona.