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Mysterious Light-Toned Deposit in Vinogradov Crater

Sept. 10, 2014
This image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows Vinogradov, an old, 224-kilometer diameter, heavily degraded impact crater in southern Margaritifer Terra.
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Vinogradov is an old, 224-kilometer diameter, heavily degraded impact crater in southern Margaritifer Terra.

The southeastern floor of Vinogradov is covered with several mysterious light-toned, sub-meter scale "blobs" that lack obvious layering. In some places the light-toned material appears to have filled pre-existing craters giving them a circular appearance.

The light-toned material has a northwest-southeast orientation and tends to be associated with a smooth, darker-toned deposit. This material may be related to ejecta from a nearby crater, eroded from the rim of Vinogradov or emplaced by some other process.

This is a stereo pair with ESP_037519_1590.

HiRISE is one of six instruments on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colorado. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

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