Wrinkle Ridges and Pit Craters

Tectonic stresses highly modified this area of Ganges Catena, north of Valles Marineris. The long, skinny ridges (called "wrinkle ridges") are evidence of compressional stresses in Mars' crust that created a crack (fault) where one side was pushed on top of the other side, also known as a thrust fault.

As shown by cross-cutting relationships, however, extensional stresses have more recently pulled the crust of Mars apart in this region. (HiRISE imaged this area in 2-by-2 binning mode, so a pixel represents a 50 x 50 square centimeter.)

The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. 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.