Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to another bridge from Viking

Your Crater

Here, in context.

Note that the ENE fractures are regional tectonic fractures, not Lava Tubes. Scale is 256 pixels/degree in my linked image - one degree on Mars is ~ 60 km, so it's around 4 pixels/km or 250 m/pixel - rather larger than you remembered. The main crater is about 60 km diameter and the smaller on on the left with the Central Peak is about 15 km diameter (these central peaks come-in at about 10-12 km diameter and disappear again at 20-25km)

Took me a little while, but I could almost smell type of terrain it was in, and the smaller crater on the left with the central peak is a very distinctive class of craters on Mars - it gives a good guide to scale. The overall crater density and presence of NNE-aligned wrinkle ridges also helps identify the terrain as early Hesperian plains units.

It was basically a matter of scanning around the mid-latitudes of Mars until the fracture pattern aligned with that in your image (approx ENE), and located at the fringes of the extensive regions of chaos development..

The chaotic fracturing of the earlier (? volatile rich ?) crater fill is very common in these areas of Mars - it says something about the climate and depositional environment of that part of Mars way back in the Early Hesperian.

Here's another example with 3 or 4 different filled-and-fractured craters, but without the coincidence of a regional fracture cutting through:-
PDS Planetary Mapper - This is the successor to the old and now-defunct Amateur Astronaut.

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