Image Credit: NASA/JPL/ASU

Context image credit: NASA/JPL/MOLA
View on map

 

Detailed information on this image is available at the THEMIS Data Releases website.

 

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

 

This image shows the dissected interior of a crater in the Cydonia region of Mars. The flat-topped buttes and mesas in the northern portion of the image were once a contiuous layer of material that filled the crater. Since deposition, the material has been disturbed and dissected. The process that causes such landforms is not well known, but likley involves frozen subsurface water that may have found its way to the surface. The surfaces on the mesas are not rough, suggesting that the whole scene is mantled with fine dust, masking the details that may give clues to whether surface water was in- volved at some point in the past. Small recent channels can be seen in the lower left. This is an indication of relatively recent small-scale surface activity, which has been could have been volcanic, fluvial, or some process involving subsurface volatiles (ice).