Wrinkle Ridges and Young Fresh Crater

Scaled Image

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/ASU

About this image

Wrinkle ridges are a very common landform on Mars, Mercury, Venus, and the Moon. These ridges are linear to arcuate asymmetric topographic highs commonly found on smooth plains. The origin of wrinkle ridges is not certain and two leading hypotheses have been put forth by scientists over the past 40 years. The volcanic model calls for the extrusion of high viscosity lavas along linear conduits. This thick lava accumulated over these conduits and formed the ridges. The other model is tectonic and advocates that the ridges are formed by compressional faulting and folding. Today's THEMIS image is of the ridged plains of Lunae Planum located between Kasei Valles and Valles Marineris in the northern hemisphere of the planet. Wrinkle ridges are found mostly along the eastern side of the image. The broadest wrinkle ridges in this image are up to 2 km wide. A 3 km diameter young fresh crater is located near the bottom of the image. The crater's ejecta blanket is also clearly seen surrounding the sharp well-defined crater rim. These features are indicative of a very young crater that has not been subjected to erosional processes.

Please see the THEMIS Data Citation Note for details on crediting THEMIS images. 

Context

Image ID: 
V01388007 (View data in Mars Image Explorer)
14.087
287.943
1388
2002-04-07 14:14
Fri, 2002-05-10
VIS
1024 pixels (18 km)
3648 pixels (66 km)
0.018106 km/pixel
0.018237 km/pixel

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