Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and downloaded on June 1, 2026.

The science team labels the features on the floor of the crater vaguely as “irregular cellular structures on crater floor,” which to my eye — after looking at innumerable MRO pictures of craters on Mars — looks like glacial fill that has begun to sublimate away. As it does, from below, its protective top layer of dirt and debris begins to resemble peeling paint, or in this case the “irregular cellular structures” as described by the scientists.

Their description is purposely vague because they have probably not yet confirmed the presence of ice in this particular crater, though this supposition is reasonable based on almost two decades of orbital data.

The white dot on the overview map to the right marks the location, in the southern cratered highlands of Mars at about 43 degrees south latitude. The inset shows the entire unnamed crater, about 19 miles wide and about 2,700 feet deep. In the picture above the elevation difference from the rim to the floor is about 2,000 feet.

What makes this geology even more interesting is the string of gullies that appear to flow down the crater’s western interior rim. On Earth explaining these would be simple: They are drainage gullies produced by flowing water.

On Mars that explanation doesn’t work, based on what we know at present. Liquid water cannot exist in the thin atmosphere and cold conditions on Mars. These gullies have got to have another origin, likely related to ice or dry ice or some mixture of both combined with other minerals that could mix with the H2O.

Either way, this crater is another data point indicating the ubiquitous presence of near surface ice on Mars. As long as you are not in the Martian dry equatorial regions, you will find frozen water close to the surface.