New Impact Crater: Formed between Jan 2006 and May 2008
NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona
New Impact Crater: Formed between Jan 2006 and May 2008
PSP_010862_1880  Science Theme: Impact Processes
This impact crater is only about 5.5 meters (18 feet) across - tiny compared to the giant basins that scar most planetary bodies. This type of bowl-shaped crater is called a simple crater. It's “simple” compared to larger craters that have terraces, central peaks and rings, and other, more complex, shapes.

Why should we care about such a small, plain crater? One reason is that it's extremely young. The large craters we see on Mars are millions to several billion years old, but this crater formed between January 2006 and May 2008. That means it was only a few months to a few years old when HiRISE observed it. We know this because we have been studying Mars with multiple missions over a long time period, and we can compare images of the same area and detect changes. In this case, the Context camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took an image that had a dark spot in it. (To see the dark spot in the CTX image, look near the middle of this image, to the left of the central group of little hills.) When this was compared to a previous image from the THEMIS instrument, the dark spot wasn't there. Therefore, we know it must have formed between the dates those two images were taken.

The Context camera has a lower resolution than HiRISE, in order to cover more area. A single pixel is about the same size as this crater. So that Context image can't resolve the crater; all that's visible is a dark spot. When HiRISE followed up on the detection and returned this more detailed image, we could see that the dark spot is actually a much larger area surrounding this tiny crater. The dark area that allows us to detect these new impacts is probably the result of lighter-colored dust being blown off the surface by the impact event.

At this site, there are also some streaks of dark material that was ejected out of the ground. Using this higher resolution image, we can positively identify a new crater at the center of the dark spot.



Written by: Ingrid Daubar  (6 March 2009)
 
Acquisition date
19 November 2008

Local Mars time
15:42

Latitude (centered)
8.072°

Longitude (East)
167.013°

Spacecraft altitude
277.7 km (172.6 miles)

Original image scale range
27.8 cm/pixel (with 1 x 1 binning) so objects ~83 cm across are resolved

Map projected scale
25 cm/pixel and North is up

Map projection
Equirectangular

Emission angle
3.3°

Phase angle
58.2°

Solar incidence angle
55°, with the Sun about 35° above the horizon

Solar longitude
160.4°, Northern Summer

For non-map projected images
North azimuth:  97°
Sub-solar azimuth:  9.6°
JPEG
Black and white
map projected  non-map

IRB color
map projected  non-map

Merged IRB
map projected

Merged RGB
map projected

RGB color
non-map projected

JP2
Black and white
map-projected   (280MB)

IRB color
map-projected   (283MB)

JP2 EXTRAS
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map-projected  (137MB)
non-map           (158MB)

IRB color
map projected  (91MB)
non-map           (298MB)

Merged IRB
map projected  (95MB)

Merged RGB
map-projected  (101MB)

RGB color
non map           (276MB)
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
B&W label
Color label
Merged IRB label
Merged RGB label
EDR products
HiView

NB
IRB: infrared-red-blue
RGB: red-green-blue
About color products (PDF)

Black & white is 5 km across; enhanced color about 1 km
For scale, use JPEG/JP2 black & white map-projected images

USAGE POLICY
All of the images produced by HiRISE and accessible on this site are within the public domain: there are no restrictions on their usage by anyone in the public, including news or science organizations. We do ask for a credit line where possible:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona

POSTSCRIPT
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The HiRISE camera was built by Ball Aerospace and Technology Corporation and is operated by the University of Arizona.