Colorful Bedrock in the Central Uplift of an Impact Crater

Large impact craters rebound from the initial shock, raising deep bedrock to the surface in the central uplift of the crater.

Often this bedrock has greater compositional diversity than the surface layers, because they are from greater depths, older, jumbled, and altered, and very diverse.

The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.