| Mars:
Chain of Pits on Pavonis
Mons |
PIA01686
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Pavonis
Mons is the middle of the three large Tharsis Montes volcanoes in the martian
western hemisphere. Located on the equator at about 113°W longitude,
Pavonis Mons stands as much as 7 kilometers above the surrounding plain.
The Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) recently spied
the above chain of elliptical pits on the lower east flank of Pavonis Mons.
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| Image
Credit: NASA/JPL/Malin
Space Science Systems |
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| Pavonis
Mons is the middle of the three large Tharsis Montes volcanoes in the martian
western hemisphere. Located on the equator at about 113°W longitude,
Pavonis Mons stands as much as 7 kilometers above the surrounding plain.
The Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) recently spied
the above chain of elliptical pits on the lower east flank of Pavonis Mons.
The picture covers an area 3 kilometers wide by 3.4 kilometers in length. |
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The
pits are aligned down the center of a 485 meters--wide, shallow trough.
The straight trough and the pits were both formed by collapse associated
with faulting. The scarp on each side of the trough is a fault line--troughs
of this type are known to geologists as graben. Such features are typically
formed when the ground is being moved apart by tectonic forces, or when
the ground is uplifted by molten rock injected into the near sub-surface
from deeper underground. Both processes may be contributing to the features
seen on Pavonis Mons. The pits follow the trend of these faults, and indicate
the locus of collapse. Illumination is from the upper left in this image. |
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| Malin
Space Science Systems and the California Institute of Technology built the
MOC using spare hardware from the Mars Observer mission. MSSS operates the
camera from its facilities in San Diego, CA. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's
Mars Surveyor Operations Project operates the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft
with its industrial partner, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, from facilities
in Pasadena, CA and Denver, CO. |
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