New crater spotted on Mars

June 9, 2015

Bill Condie

Bill Condie is a science journalist based in Adelaide, Australia.

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured this close-up image of a relatively recent impact crater in the Sirenum Fossae region of Mars. The sharp rim and well-preserved ejecta suggest that, in geological terms it is quite fresh.

The crater, a little more than a kilometre wide, photographed by the orbiter’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera.

new crater2 — NASA/JPL-Caltech/JHUAPL/Univ. of Arizona

Meanwhile, the orbiter’s Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) has taken this image of deposits of impact glass preserved in Martian craters, including Alga Crater, shown above.

The glass was detected by researchers at Brown University.

In colour-coding based on analysis of CRISM spectra, green indicates the presence of glass. (Blues are pyroxene; reds are olivine.)

Impact glass forms in the heat of a violent impact that excavates a crater. Impact glass found on Earth can preserve evidence about ancient life.

This view shows Alga Crater’s central peak, which is about 5 kilometres wide within the 19 kilometre diameter of this southern-hemisphere crater.