Re: HiRISE Camera on NASA Orbiter Gets Spectacular View of Rover at Victoria Crater


J. Taylor wrote:
On 6 Oct 2006 16:06:29 -0700, baalke@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

HiRISE CAMERA ON NASA ORBITER GETS SPECTACULAR VIEW OF ROVER AT
VICTORIA CRATER
(From Lori Stiles, University Communications, 520-626-4402)

- Friday, October 06, 2006

------------------------------------------------------
Contact Information
Alfred S. McEwen 520-621-4573 mcewen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Images online at
http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/TRA/TRA_000873_1780/
http://www.nasa.gov/mro
--------------------------------------------------------

With stunningly powerful vision, the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars
Reconnaissance
Orbiter has taken a remarkable picture that shows the exploration rover
Opportunity poised on the rim of Victoria crater on Mars.

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera detailed
the
entire 800-meter (roughly half-mile) Victoria crater and the rover --
down to
its rover tracks and shadows -- in a single high-resolution image taken
Wednesday (Oct. 3).

Alfred S. McEwen of the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary
Laboratory
released portions of the image that show views of the rover and crater
at a
NASA press conference in Washington, D.C., today. McEwen is principal
investigator for HiRISE, which is operated from UA's Lunar and
Planetary
Laboratory in Tucson.

"We're poised to have a fantastic mission, and we're not even at prime
science
mission yet," McEwen said at the NASA press briefing this morning.
"This was
our very first attempt to image 'off-nadir' (at an angle as opposed to
straight
down), and it worked fabulously well," McEwen added. "It's been an
exciting
week."

The HiRISE images for Victoria crater are available online at
http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/TRA/TRA_000873_1780/


Download the HiRes
Full Size JPG 4045 x 5085 16.4 MBytes
http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/TRA/TRA_000873_1780/Victoria-color.jpg

The dune pattern, in the center of the crater, is particularly
interesting. Is there anything like it on Earth?


The stuff on the top, yes, ..sure, is typical of wind-blown sands
anywhere, but the stuff in the crater is obviously different. With no
upturned lip and the strata all the way around being undeformed it's
obviously not an impact crater. It's a *Pit Crater* (- Subsidence)
and the pattern in the middle is due to shock vibration (volcanic
explosions) . Like Archimedes Pandemonium is advocating for his fridge
model.

You get strings of them on the Valles Marineris (and actually on some
of the larger asteroids) as the precursor to development of the Valles
itself. Which is an interesting point when you consider how stuff can
subside when there is nowhere for it to subside to (unless it's hollow,
...or 'growing' :

:-)




JT

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