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PIA02009: Northern Impact
This image from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor shows a partially-buried crater in the north polar region of Mars. A circular feature is surrounded and partly overlain by some of the many, many sand dunes in the area.
 Target Name:  Mars
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) 
 Spacecraft:  Mars Global Surveyor Orbiter
 Instrument:  Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) 
 Product Size:  836 x 1881 pixels (w x h) 
 Produced By:  Malin Space Science Systems 
 Producer ID:  MOC2-1406  
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA02009.tif (1.574 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA02009.jpg (269.4 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:

19 March 2006
This Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) image shows a partially-buried crater in the north polar region of Mars. The circular feature is surrounded and partly overlain by some of the many, many sand dunes in the area. The steepest slopes on each dune -- their slip faces -- face toward the southeast (lower right), indicating that the dominant winds responsible for sand transport in this region come from the northwest (upper left). In summer, the dunes in this scene would be darker than their surroundings, but in this northern springtime image, the dunes and everything else in the area are covered by carbon dioxide frost. The frost is left over from the winter which ended in January 2006.

Location near: 76.0°N, 82.2°W
Image width: ~3 km (~1.9 mi)
Illumination from: lower left
Season: Northern Spring

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems

Image Addition Date:
2006-03-19