PIA07951: Broken Sedimentary Rocks
NASA's Mars Global Surveyor shows Mars Global Surveyor and 2001 Mars Odyssey, both in nearly circular, near-polar orbits, one of the first pictures of any spacecraft orbiting Mars taken by another spacecraft orbiting Mars in 2005.
 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:  2048 x 2652 pixels (w x h) 
 Produced By:  Malin Space Science Systems 
 Producer ID:  MOC2-1094  
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA07951.tif (5.437 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA07951.jpg (793.7 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:

18 May 2005
This Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) image shows broken-up blocks of sedimentary rock in western Candor Chasma. There are several locations in western Candor that exhibit this pattern of broken rock. The manner in which these landforms were created is unknown; it is possible that there was a landslide or a meteoritic impact that broke up the materials. One attribute that is known: in some of these cases, it seems that the rock was broken and then buried by later sedimentary rocks, before later being exhumed so that they can be seen from orbit today.

Location near: 6.9°S, 75.5°W
Image width: ~3 km (~1.9 mi)
Illumination from: upper left
Season: Southern Winter

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems

Image Addition Date:
2005-05-18