Pit Craters
Among the most exciting places that the Mars Global Surveyor
(MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) has photographed during its three
and a half years in orbit has been this crater in central Noachis Terra.
Located at 47°S, 355°W, the crater appears to have been
almost completely filled, and subsequently eroded in localized pits, by
unknown processes. In this one place we see elements of the two
most important results of the MOC investigation--the discovery of young
gullies formed by fluid erosion and the occurrence of thick sequences
of layered rock attesting to a martian past of substantial geologic activity.
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Photo Credit: NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems
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