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PIA20812: Mesas and Pits
This image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft covers mesas, or high-standing plateaus, to the north and pits, or low-standing, depressions to the south. What formed these mesas and pits is a question not so easy to answer.
 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_045390_2215 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA20812.tif (15.56 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA20812.jpg (922 kB)  

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What's up and what's down? This image covers mesas, or high-standing plateaus, to the north and pits, or low-standing, depressions to the south. If it looks the other way around, then you are not seeing the topography correctly.

Remember that the Sun is coming from the left (west) at MRO's imaging time of about 3 p.m. What formed these mesas and pits is a question that is not so easy to answer.

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:
2016-07-15