Mantling Material on Crater Floor
NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona
Mantling Material on Crater Floor
PSP_001507_1400  Science Theme: Geologic Contacts/Stratigraphy
This image shows remnants of a mantling deposit on the floor of a crater in the Southern highlands of Mars.

The slope up towards the crater rim is visible in the lower right part of the image. The rough, hummocky texture may be related to loss of ice from material that was once ice-rich.

One goal of this image was to investigate the parallel lines that are visible around several of the large hummocks and hills in the image's center. We'd like to determine whether these are layers that are present throughout the rock, or whether they are merely on the surface. In the first case, these may be the expression of buried bedrock layers. However, it is also possible that these are related to the mantling deposits, perhaps representing variations in the mantle.

At high resolution, the lines appear to be small ridges, that are either buried by or composed of the mantling material. In the best exposures, these ridges look like the edges of layers of the mantling material that was draped over the entire region and then eroded off the high places. This suggests the second hypothesis: we are probably seeing variations in the mantle, perhaps due to multiple cycles of material being laid down.



Written by: Colin Dundas  (18 April 2007)
 
Acquisition date
21 November 2006

Local Mars time
15:40

Latitude (centered)
-39.583°

Longitude (East)
343.750°

Spacecraft altitude
250.9 km (156.0 miles)

Original image scale range
from 25.1 cm/pixel (with 1 x 1 binning) to 100.5 cm/pixel (with 4 x 4 binning)

Map projected scale
25 cm/pixel and North is up

Map projection
Equirectangular

Emission angle
0.3°

Phase angle
76.0°

Solar incidence angle
76°, with the Sun about 14° above the horizon

Solar longitude
138.9°, Northern Summer

For non-map projected images
North azimuth:  97°
Sub-solar azimuth:  41.3°
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IRB: infrared-red-blue
RGB: red-green-blue
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Black & white is 5 km across; enhanced color about 1 km
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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.