Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on May 3, 2026 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The science team labels this a “crater on debris covered glacier.” The crater, the dark spot in the upper center, is only about 450 feet across. The impact apparently took place onto this glacial slope, and since then the glacier has continued to flow downhill (as indicated by the arrows), flowing around the denser material pounded down by the impact.

The elevation loss within this image is about 300 feet, along a distance of just under two miles. How long it took this glacial material to flow this much however is unknown. Nor is it known when this happened. The orbital data so far of all Martian glaciers suggests they are at this time inactive, neither growing or shrinking.

The white dot in the rectangle on the overview map to the right marks the location, on the northern interior slope of the long Reull Valles, one of several glacial filled canyons that flow down the eastern slopes of Hellas Basin, the death valley of Mars.

Though the downhill grade is to the south in the picture above, in the canyon itself the flow is from east to west. It appears that this east-west flow has acted over the eons to wear away at the northern canyon wall, causing it to flow downward to the south, where its glacial material and surface debris merges with the main glacier.

Why the glacier appears to flow around this particular impact crater, but appears undisturbed by several other craters and protruding peaks, is a question I cannot answer. It suggests to me that maybe this particular bolide was more dense than the others (maybe a metal asteroid?), and thus able to block the glacial flow more effectively. This however is an utter guess, not to be taken very seriously.