Weirdest Mars Craters Spotted by HiRISE: Photos
| The Martian surface is peppered with impact craters of all shapes, sizes and ages. However, many of the craters are just plain weird. |
discovery.com
But just how ‘weird’ is weird?
Curious, Discovery News asked the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) team which craters they considered to be the strangest. HiRISE is the most advanced camera to be put into Mars orbit. It is attached to NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and currently snapping features on the Red Planet’s surface — it has seen a ton of strange objects (sadly, it hasn’t found a top secret military base yet, despite what you may have heard to the contrary). So, let’s take a tour of some of the weirdest craters Mars has on offer…
| Crater, Horst and Graben: Is that a piece of modern art? Actually, it’s an impact crater that has been bent and twisted by tectonic processes. Along the fault line that crosses this crater, blocks of rock are forced upward (called “horst”) and downward (called “graben”). This is interesting to planetary scientists as it shows that tectonic activity was occurring after the crater was formed. |
| Rolling Stones Logo? If you squint and use a little imagination, you may see the Rolling Stones’ logo. Well, that’s what the HiRISE team told us anyway. (I’m still squinting…) In reality, it’s an impact crater on a sloping surface. Presumably, the “tongue” of material is slipping down the slope. |
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Bulls-Eye Impact? Did a small meteorite have the incredible fortune to slam into the center of a larger impact crater? Probably not. This is one of several examples of “terraced” craters where alternating layers of hard and soft material in the surface layers of the Martian surface have been hit by a single meteorite. The result is a concentric nesting of ridges inside the same crater. Pretty!
NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
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What the…? What’s the weirdest kind of impact crater? The kind that may not be an impact crater at all (but looks like one). On the slopes of Pavonis Mons, one of Mars’ shield volcanoes, this crater has a hole in the middle. The hole is a “skylight,” or the collapsed roof of a subterranean lava tube. The loose material above the collapsed roof appears to have slumped into the skylight, creating a crater lookalike. But what caused the roof of the lava tube to collapse? Could a meteorite be to blame? No idea, but HiRISE will be taking some more photos of this little oddity to find out.
NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
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The Crater with a Robot Visitor: What makes this crater weird? Well, it’s not the crater, it’s the little man-made robot that’s parked on the crater’s western rim that makes this scene weirdly awesome. It’s even weirder to think that a robot in Mars orbit has taken a photo of another robot on the Martian surface a couple of hundred miles below. Robots looking out for robots on alien worlds…
This is of course NASA’s tenacious Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity that keeps exploring the Martian surface since exceeding its primary mission duration of 3 months back in 2004. Opportunity now has company on the Martian surface — on Aug. 5, 2012, the nuclear-powered Curiosity landed inside Gale Crater to look for clues behind the habitability of the red planet.
NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
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In March 2013, HiRISE spotted a series of non-impact craters in Acidalia Planitia. These may not be impact craters, but they are unlike any other crater discovered on Mars to date! So the process behind their formation will remain a mystery… for now.
NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
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Cracked Cookie Crater? There’s an odd pair of craters in Hrad Vallis that the HiRISE website describe as a “pair of odd craters.” Why so… odd? Well, to me, the larger crater looks like a cracked cookie, probably crevasses and faults carved across its diameter.
NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
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Source: http://www.ascensionearth2012.org/2014/07/weirdest-mars-craters-spotted-by-hirise.html
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