PIA17608: Fresh Crater Exposing Buried Ice on Mid-Latitude Mars
 Target Name:  Mars
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)
 Spacecraft:  Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)
 Instrument:  HiRISE
 Product Size:  751 x 564 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  University of Arizona/HiRISE-LPL
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA17608.tif (1.271 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA17608.jpg (46.92 kB)

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

A meteorite impact that excavated this crater on Mars exposed bright ice that had been hidden just beneath the surface at this location: latitude 43.9 degrees north, longitude 204.3 degrees east. The 100-meter scale bar at lower right is 109 yards.

The image is an excerpt from an observation by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera (HiRISE) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Jan. 30, 2012. Additional image products from the same observation are at http://www.uahirise.org/ESP_025840_2240. The image has been processed to allow details to be seen in both the bright ice and the darker soil.

The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

Image Addition Date:
2013-12-10