Broken Sedimentary Rocks

May 18, 2005

NASA's Mars Global Surveyor shows Mars Global Surveyor and 2001 Mars Odyssey, both in nearly circular, near-polar orbits, one of the first pictures of any spacecraft orbiting Mars taken by another spacecraft orbiting Mars in 2005.

18 May 2005
This Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) image shows broken-up blocks of sedimentary rock in western Candor Chasma. There are several locations in western Candor that exhibit this pattern of broken rock. The manner in which these landforms were created is unknown; it is possible that there was a landslide or a meteoritic impact that broke up the materials. One attribute that is known: in some of these cases, it seems that the rock was broken and then buried by later sedimentary rocks, before later being exhumed so that they can be seen from orbit today.

Location near: 6.9°S, 75.5°W
Image width: ~3 km (~1.9 mi)
Illumination from: upper left
Season: Southern Winter

Broken Sedimentary Rocks

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