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Today's VIS image shows one of several craters located on the floor of the much larger Tikhonravov Crater in Terra Sabaea. Named for Russian rocket scientist, Mikhail Tikhonravov, the crater is thought to have been the location of a large lake, which may have laid down layers of material now exposed on the margins of this pedestal crater. A pedestal crater is formed by removal of surface materials around a resistant layer of ejecta, eventually leaving the crater and ejecta as a mesa or plateau on the lower elevation base surface.

Orbit Number: 78401 Latitude: 12.9296 Longitude: 34.4892 Instrument: VIS Captured: 2019-08-17 20:32

Please see the THEMIS Data Citation Note for details on crediting THEMIS images.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) was developed by Arizona State University, Tempe, in collaboration with Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing. The THEMIS investigation is led by Dr. Philip Christensen at Arizona State University. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, is the prime contractor for the Odyssey project, and developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and from JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.