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PIA21112: Wrinkle Ridges and Pit Craters
In this image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter tectonic stresses highly modified this area of Ganges Catena, north of Valles Marineris.
 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:  Johns Hopkins University/APL 
 Other  
Information: 		 Other products from ESP_046817_1775 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA21112.tif (15.56 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA21112.jpg (1.001 MB)  

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Tectonic stresses highly modified this area of Ganges Catena, north of Valles Marineris. The long, skinny ridges (called "wrinkle ridges") are evidence of compressional stresses in Mars' crust that created a crack (fault) where one side was pushed on top of the other side, also known as a thrust fault.

As shown by cross-cutting relationships, however, extensional stresses have more recently pulled the crust of Mars apart in this region. (HiRISE imaged this area in 2-by-2 binning mode, so a pixel represents a 50 x 50 square centimeter.)

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:
2016-10-19