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PIA23855: Disrupted Sediments in Acidalia Planitia
This image acquired on March 29, 2020 by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, shows a pitted, blocky surface, but also more unusually, it has contorted, irregular features.
 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_064090_2250 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA23855.tif (15.56 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA23855.jpg (1.029 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:

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This color HiRISE view shows a pitted, blocky surface, but also more unusually, it has contorted, irregular features.

Although there are impact craters in this area, some of the features (like in the lower center of the cutout) are too irregular to be relic impact craters or river channels. One possibility is that sedimentary layers have been warped from below to create these patterns. The freezing and thawing of subsurface ice is a mechanism that could have caused this.

Acidalia Planitia is part of the northern plains of Mars, at a latitude of 44 degrees north.

The map is projected here at a scale of 50 centimeters (19.7 inches) per pixel. (The original image scale is 63.7 centimeters [25.1 inches] per pixel [with 2 x 2 binning]; objects on the order of 191 centimeters [75.2 inches] across are resolved.) North is up.

The University of Arizona, in Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., in Boulder, Colorado. 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/University of Arizona

Image Addition Date:
2020-04-17