New view of dark pit on Mars
Thu Aug 30, 2007 at 06:57 UTC
The High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has confirmed that a dark pit seen on Mars in an earlier HiRISE image really is a vertical shaft that cuts through lava flow on the flank of the Arsia Mons volcano. Such pits form on similar volcanoes in Hawaii and are called "pit craters."
The HiRISE team also released another 930 images to the Planetary Data System (PDS).
This release adds another 1.8 terabytes to the PDS. The project turned over its first 1,200 HiRISE images to PDS last May. The PDS now holds a total 3.5 terabytes of HiRISE data, one of the largest single datasets returned from a spacecraft and archived in NASA's space mission library.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
This view, a small portion of a HiRISE image taken on Aug. 9, 2007, shows a dark pit about 150 meters (492 feet) in diameter set in a lava flow. The image was taken with the camera pointing slightly westward, instead of straight down. It catches the eastern wall of the pit lit by afternoon sunlight. The image was taken at 14:34 local Mars time.
| Source: University of Arizona | |
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