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PIA20005: Gullies in a Central Pit Crater
Sometimes a central pit forms inside some Martian craters, especially when there's substantial ground ice. Such is the case in this observation from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft.
 Target Name:  Mars
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) 
 Spacecraft:  Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)
 Instrument:  HiRISE 
 Product Size:  2880 x 1800 pixels (w x h) 
 Produced By:  University of Arizona/HiRISE-LPL 
 Other  
Information: 		 Other products from ESP_042615_1385 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA20005.tif (15.56 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA20005.jpg (885.4 kB)  

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Sometimes a central pit forms inside some Martian craters, especially when there's substantial ground ice. Such is the case in this observation.

Sometimes what we call "mass wasting" processes (think small avalanches or landslides) occur on the slopes of the central pit. We took this image to search for any recent activity that would add to or modify previously identified gullies.

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:
2015-10-14