Catalog Page for PIA12178

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PIA12178: The Beauty of Layered Stratigraphy

The layered bedrock in this image was brought from several kilometers of depth during the formation of this 44 kilometer wide crater in the volcanic plains of Lunae Planum as seen by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Target Name:	Mars
Is a satellite of:	Sol (our sun)
Mission:	Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)
Spacecraft:	Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)
Instrument:	HiRISE
Product Size:	4500 x 3000 pixels (w x h)
Produced By:	University of Arizona/HiRISE-LPL
Other Information:	Other products from ESP_017833_1975
Full-Res TIFF:	PIA12178.tif (40.52 MB)
Full-Res JPEG:	PIA12178.jpg (2.705 MB)

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:

Map Projected Browse Image
Click on the image for larger version

The layered bedrock in this image was brought from several kilometers of depth during the formation of this 44 kilometer wide crater in the volcanic plains of Lunae Planum.

As these layers were exhumed and brought to nearly vertical orientations, faulting and fracturing occurred and breccia dikes formed. Breccias are rocks consisting of angular and sharp fragments, and a dike is a fracture that has been widened by forces pulling apart the rock while simultaneously filling it with rocky materials. Breccia dikes are a common feature in terrestrial craters and can now be recognized in brilliant preservation on Mars.

This high-resolution, false-color image cutout above allows us to see a cross-cutting breccia dike near the bottom of the image.

This is a stereo pair with ESP_017055_1975.

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 Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

Image Credit:

NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

Image Addition Date:

2017-01-20