Released 23 September 2003

A 22 km-diameter crater has been sliced by the tectonic forces that produced the rift known as Sirenum Fossae. The orientation of this rift is roughly radial to the great Tharsis volcano Arsia Mons, probably indicating a link between the formation of the rift and the volcano. Note how the rift cuts through a jumble of mounds on the floor of the crater. This indicates a sequence of events beginning with the formation of the crater followed by an infilling of material that was then eroded into the mounds and ultimately split open by the shifting martian crust.

Image information: VIS instrument. Latitude -29.7, Longitude 211.7 East (148.3 West). 19 meter/pixel resolution.

Note: this THEMIS visual image has not been radiometrically nor geometrically calibrated for this preliminary release. An empirical correction has been performed to remove instrumental effects. A linear shift has been applied in the cross-track and down-track direction to approximate spacecraft and planetary motion. Fully calibrated and geometrically projected images will be released through the Planetary Data System in accordance with Project policies at a later time.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) was developed by Arizona State University, Tempe, in collaboration with Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing. The THEMIS investigation is led by Dr. Philip Christensen at Arizona State University. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, is the prime contractor for the Odyssey project, and developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and from JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.