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A New Crater on a Dusty Slope

Feb. 20, 2017
This image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows a new impact site originally detected by the Context Camera onboard MRO. The crater is on a dusty slope, which also has several dark slope streaks due to dust avalanches.
Context Image

This image shows a new impact site originally detected by the Context Camera onboard MRO. The crater is on a dusty slope, which also has several dark slope streaks due to dust avalanches.

A previous impact at another place on Mars triggered a major dust avalanche, but this one did not. This tells us that the dust here is more stable (stronger and/or on a lower slope).

The map is projected here at a scale of 25 centimeters (9.8 inches) per pixel. [The original image scale is 27.1 centimeters (9.8 inches) per pixel (with 1 x 1 binning); objects on the order of 81 centimeters (30 inches) across are resolved.] North is up.

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 Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

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