Unfortunately I kept a copy of this image but not the coordinates. I recall it was from Armchair Astronaut at maximum resolution so I believe this was about 70-100 meters per pixel. So if that is right then the cracks are about 2-4 pixels wide so perhaps 140-400 meters wide.
If so then they are of a reasonable size to cover over and pressurise. The advantage of a site like this is so many cracks converge into each other rather than using a single long straight valley. I suppose any chaos area could be used in this way though. Still this is the only chaos like this I ever saw in a crater.
The crack on the right of the image points at the crater and then seems to disappear like it goes underground, but at the edge of the crater it appears to resurface there as a hole. So unless the two are unrelated the cracks would be the same feature and so either it was filled in between those two points or it becomes a cave like a lava tube. The crack on the left which goes into the crater doesn't appear to go underground so it seems unlikely the crater filled in the crack on the right with ejecta.
If it was a cave or at least a partial one then it might be excavated and create a huge underground area. At least that was the reasoning when I kept the photo about 10 years ago.
I get the impression from the image that these cracks were exposed by the crater and perhaps might be ancient chaos formations, but the crack that points into it from the right seems like part of the chaos.
So the chaos couldn't be formed by the crater impact because it couldn't also form the cracks leading out of the crater.
Another possibility is that the cracks were filled with ice and then buried, and the crater exposed this and melted the ice. If so then there might still be ice caves from this ancient chaos. If this was true then there might be vast underground caves like this on Mars if deep enough to survive the impacts.
Space/Science » in reply to Actually more complex
re: Actually more complex
