Catalog Page for PIA25900

Find a Node - Use these links to navigate to any of the 8 publicly accessible PDS Nodes.

This bar indicates that you are within the PDS enterprise which includes 6 science discipline nodes and 2 support nodes which are overseen by the Project Management Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). Each node is led by an expert in the subject discipline, supported by an advisory group of other practitioners of that discipline, and subject to selection and approval under a regular NASA Research Announcement.

PIA25900: Bumpy, Expanded Craters

This image acquired on January 2, 2023 by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows expanded craters with an unusually bumpy texture in the outer apron where sublimation occurred.

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_077046_2180
Full-Res TIFF:	PIA25900.tif (15.56 MB)
Full-Res JPEG:	PIA25900.jpg (1.522 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:

Map Projected Browse Image
Click on image for larger version

Expanded craters on Mars are thought to occur when the upper slopes of an impact crater in an ice-rich target sublimate (going directly from a solid to a gaseous state). The vaporizing ice makes the walls retreat while the lower slopes are armored by dust and debris, resulting in a funnel-shaped formation.

The expanded craters in this image have an unusually bumpy texture in the outer apron where the sublimation occurred. The bumps are too large to be boulders. This suggests that the ice had concentrations of other material.

The map is projected here at a scale of 50 centimeters (19.7 inches) per pixel. (The original image scale is 59.6 centimeters [23.5 inches] per pixel [with 2 x 2 binning]; objects on the order of 179 centimeters [70.5 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:

2023-04-13