Craters on Craters

Today's VIS image is of a group of craters in Solis Planum. Because three of the craters are overlapping it is possible to determine the order in which those three were created. While we can not say exactly when in Martian history these craters formed, we can delineate the relative order of formation. Since impacts create circular craters, a recently formed crater will create a crescent into the crater it impacts. So the order of impact in this image is 1) the crater at the bottom, 2) the large crater in the middle of the image, and 3) the small crater mostly off this image to the right.

Orbit Number: 67865 Latitude: -30.7955 Longitude: 276.931 Instrument: VIS Captured: 2017-04-01 23:16

Please see the THEMIS Data Citation Note for details on crediting THEMIS images.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) was developed by Arizona State University, Tempe, in collaboration with Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing. The THEMIS investigation is led by Dr. Philip Christensen at Arizona State University. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, is the prime contractor for the Odyssey project, and developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and from JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.