Sunday, November 27, 2011

Buried Ice Under Fresh Crater


Recent small craters discovered by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter expose buried ice in the middle latitudes of Mars. This ice is a record of past climate change. Not stable today, it was deposited during a period of different obliquity, or tilt, of the planet's axis.

This image is one product from HiRISE observation ESP_011337_2360.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

Notes: This crater was formed in 2008. In the larger images of the area taken by HiRISE (see the link above), the crater appears as a tiny white splotch. In the image shown above, the other tiny craters are presumably secondary craters caused by ejecta from the primary (large) impact crater.

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