Young Fluvial Channels in Margaritifer Terra

Margaritifer Terra is the most impressive water-modified landscape on Mars that preserves the highest density of valley networks on the planet.

Fluvial activity began in the Noachian period, likely peaked in the late Noachian-to-Hesperian, and then persisted, at least locally, into the Late Hesperian or Amazonian epoch. (This time period goes back at least 4 billion years to the present.)

Our image shows fluvial channels that cut through the ejecta from Jones Crater, indicating relatively younger water activity in the region.

The map is projected here at a scale of 50 centimeters (19.7 inches) per pixel. (The original image scale is 58.6 centimeters [23.1 inches] per pixel [with 2 x 2 binning]; objects on the order of 176 centimeters [69.3 inches] across are resolved.) North is up.

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