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Out of Round

Jan. 21, 2019
This image from NASA's Mars Odyssey shows a group of craters in Terra Sirenum. The apparent youngest one is the center crater with the scalloped rim.

This VIS image shows a group of craters in Terra Sirenum. The apparent youngest one is the center crater with the scalloped rim. Subsurface tectonic features like faults can interfere with crater formation and lead to craters that are not completely circular. The linear fault features towards the bottom of the image are good indications that tectonic faults interacted with the impact event, resulting in the crater shape seen in the image.

Orbit Number: 74934 Latitude: -29.081 Longitude: 181.756 Instrument: VIS Captured: 2018-11-05 07:19

Please see the THEMIS Data Citation Note for details on crediting THEMIS images.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) was developed by Arizona State University, Tempe, in collaboration with Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing. The THEMIS investigation is led by Dr. Philip Christensen at Arizona State University. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, is the prime contractor for the Odyssey project, and developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and from JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

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