Planet Mars: An Uplifted Jumble of Ancient Bedrock | NASA MRO

Planet Mars: An Uplifted Jumble of Ancient Bedrock | NASA MRO

This enhanced-color cutout from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) shows a great variety of colors and textures in Martian bedrock, where it is exposed from beneath a dark fine-grained mantle. The mantle is sometimes modified by the wind into dunes. The bedrock here includes massive, layered, and broken-up (brecciated) areas.

The image cutout is less than 1 km (under 1 mi) across and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's altitude was 256 km (159 mi) when it captured it.

Impact craters larger than a certain size have complex forms, including central peaks or other structures that result from structural uplift of the target material. This provides a mechanism for exposing deep, ancient bedrock.

The bedrock here includes massive, layered, and broken-up (brecciated) areas. This crater is located in the volcanic plains between Argyre Planitia and Valles Marineris.

Local Mars time: 14:54
Latitude (centered): -26.311°
Longitude (East): 305.211°

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter produced this image.

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is a spacecraft designed to study the geology and climate of Mars, to provide reconnaissance of future landing sites, and to relay data from surface missions back to Earth. It was launched on August 12, 2005, and reached Mars on March 10, 2006. 

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) manages MRO for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Caltech, in Pasadena, manages JPL for NASA. The University of Arizona, in Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., in Boulder, Colorado. The Context Camera was built by, and is operated by, Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego.

For more information on MRO, visit:

https://mars.nasa.gov/mro
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/mission/index.html

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
Caption Credit: Alfred McEwen  
Image Capture Date: Dec. 19, 2011

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