New Public Images, For July Options

[djellison]

http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/public...ts/S08data.html

The number of public target images is very impressive imho. Malin might likt to hang on to his data very tightly, but this campaign of public imaging is to be applauded!

Also - the next 6 months of MOC imagery should be released soon.

Doug

[Gsnorgathon]

It's in the process of being uncovered. Once upon a time, there was a crater. The crater was buried. The stuff that buried the crater began eroding away, and that's what we see today. The end.

[dvandorn]

I entirely disagree.

The land has a near-surface layer of layered sedimentary rock that is much lighter than the rockbeds below it and the upper layer of regolith. That layered rockbed is very visible in the crater wall. (In this, it resembles the craters at Meridiani, which have layered evaporite rockbeds just below a surface layer.)

Some kind of fluvial event has occurred after the crater was formed, which has stripped the upper layers off of the surrounding land, showing distinctive step-like patterns of erosion into flat, layered rockbeds. There are mesas topped with land that looks identical to the plains on the right side of the intact crater wall that occur within this scoured channel-like feature.

As the event that formed the fluvial feature broke through the left side of the crater wall, sediments carried along in the current spilled out sideways, leaving a fan of debris spilling into the crater. This deformed the left rim and probably washed a good deal of it further down the channel. I'd imagine that the crater filled with water as the flood rushed past, and that backflow against the main current caused the fine features we see in the channel boundary as it passes through the left third of the crater.

So, it seems obvious that what we're seeing is a crater that got in the way of a large flood or outflow. It's probably just a tongue of what was a larger, more massive outflow flood event of the kind that carved Chryse Planitia, Ares Valles, and many, many other places on Mars.

-the other Doug