Filled and distorted craters on Mars
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated and cropped to post here, was taken by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) on May 25, 2020. The entire image was dubbed “Cluster of Filled Craters”, but I decided to highlight the crater of the cluster that was most strangely distorted of them all. The material that fills all the craters in the full image is almost certainly buried ice and is dubbed concentric crater fill by scientists.
This crater is located in the northern lowland plains the mid-latitudes between 30 and 60 degrees, where planetary scientists have found ample evidence of many such filled craters and glaciers.
Not only does the crater’s interior seemed filled with glacial material, its distorted rim suggests that it has been reshaped by glacial activity that might have covered it entirely over the eons as the mid-latitude glaciers of Mars waxed and waned with the extreme shifts that happen regularly to Mars’ rotational tilt. Moreover, there is strong evidence that in these lowland northern plains an underground ice table exists close to the surface, allowing for more distortion over time.
The overview map below provides some location context.
The white cross indicates the location in Utopia Basin of this crater image. I have posted numerous images showing similar squishy features in Utopia. This plain is also the prime landing site in 2021 for China’s rover from its Tianwen-1 mission, now on its way to Mars. That rover will likely land to the east, just beyond the right edge of this map.
The two mensae regions, Protonilus and Nilosyrtis, to the west and in the same glacial latitude bands, are regions I call glacier country, because numerous glaciers appear to exist on almost all the slopes of the numerous canyons and mesas and buttes of this chaos terrain.
Jezero Crater is the targeted landing site for the Perseverance rover, set to land February 18, 2021. Jezero is about 18 degrees north latitude, which puts it well south of the northern hemisphere’s glacial band. Nonetheless, the strange delta flow into the crater that caused scientists to pick this landing site suggests some sort of liquid or mud flow.
Increasingly the evidence points to Mars as being a place with a lot of frozen water, with much of it apparently very close to the surface, if not on the surface and only protected by a thin layer of debris.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated and cropped to post here, was taken by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) on May 25, 2020. The entire image was dubbed “Cluster of Filled Craters”, but I decided to highlight the crater of the cluster that was most strangely distorted of them all. The material that fills all the craters in the full image is almost certainly buried ice and is dubbed concentric crater fill by scientists.
This crater is located in the northern lowland plains the mid-latitudes between 30 and 60 degrees, where planetary scientists have found ample evidence of many such filled craters and glaciers.
Not only does the crater’s interior seemed filled with glacial material, its distorted rim suggests that it has been reshaped by glacial activity that might have covered it entirely over the eons as the mid-latitude glaciers of Mars waxed and waned with the extreme shifts that happen regularly to Mars’ rotational tilt. Moreover, there is strong evidence that in these lowland northern plains an underground ice table exists close to the surface, allowing for more distortion over time.
The overview map below provides some location context.
The white cross indicates the location in Utopia Basin of this crater image. I have posted numerous images showing similar squishy features in Utopia. This plain is also the prime landing site in 2021 for China’s rover from its Tianwen-1 mission, now on its way to Mars. That rover will likely land to the east, just beyond the right edge of this map.
The two mensae regions, Protonilus and Nilosyrtis, to the west and in the same glacial latitude bands, are regions I call glacier country, because numerous glaciers appear to exist on almost all the slopes of the numerous canyons and mesas and buttes of this chaos terrain.
Jezero Crater is the targeted landing site for the Perseverance rover, set to land February 18, 2021. Jezero is about 18 degrees north latitude, which puts it well south of the northern hemisphere’s glacial band. Nonetheless, the strange delta flow into the crater that caused scientists to pick this landing site suggests some sort of liquid or mud flow.
Increasingly the evidence points to Mars as being a place with a lot of frozen water, with much of it apparently very close to the surface, if not on the surface and only protected by a thin layer of debris.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
My initial interpretation of the miss-shaped crater was that it was the product of two asteroids that orbit each other striking Mars at the same time.
Terrence: If you look at the full image, you will see that this is not the only crater distorted, though none as much as this one. While this could have been caused by a multi-impact, I have my doubts.
Do a search on BtB for Utopia, and you will see a lot of similar strange-looking craters, all suggesting there was a lot of ice at impact that melted, causing the strange shapes, that were also later distorted by other processes.
Recent hypothesis confirm the glacier theory.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/08/04/snowball-mars/
I still believe a nearby supernova sent a cloud of gas and dust up the local chimney impacting our entire solar system. Collapsed our atmosphere by burning hydrogen with our oxygen, filling our oceans, killing the dinosaurs, giving us too much nitrogen that was not native to our planet causing the first of many ice ages.
Mars, Europa, and most of the outer moons we’re also covered in ice/frozen gases. After all this time, the carbon dioxide ice caps on Mars is all that is left of a once ice covered world. All that is above ground evaporated away and was removed by the solar wind.
Max wrote, “After all this time, the carbon dioxide ice caps on Mars is all that is left of a once ice covered world. All that is above ground evaporated away and was removed by the solar wind.”
There is a big problem with this hypothesis of yours. It doesn’t fit the facts. The CO2 dry ice caps on Mars, that come and go seasonally, lie on top of large permanent ice caps of water.
In fact, as a regular reader of BtB, I can’t imagine how you can even posit a theory that says there is no water left on Mars. It seems I post something almost every day illustrating the gobs of ice they are finding in the mid-latitudes and higher.
Late to the post but a meteor approaching at a very close angle to the surface could have produced this distorted shape. Traveling from the relative west the impact energy could have died out as it propagated toward the east resulting in a lesser slope of the walls.
I don’t know why I post this stuff here but it’s a bit fun to guess. Maybe some other folks will be inclined to use their imaginations.