Bosporos Rupes

This image was taken in the mid-latitudes of Mars' Southern Hemisphere near the giant Argyre Impact Basin. It is located just to the West of a prominent scarp known as Bosporos Rupes. The left side of the image shows cratered plains. Some of the craters are heavily mantled and indistinct, whereas others exhibit sharp rims and dramatic topography. The largest crater in this half of the image is about 2,5 Km wide. Mounds and ridges, which may be remnants of an ice-rich deposit, are visible on its floor. Three sinuous valleys occupy the center of the image. Valleys such as these were first observed in data returned by the NASA Mariner 9 spacecraft, which reached Mars in 1971. The right side of the image shows part of an impact crater that is approx. 20 Km in diameter. The furrowed appearance of the crater's inner wall suggests that it has been extensively modified, perhaps by landslides and flowing water. Like other craters in the area, the floor of this crater has a rough and dissected texture that is often attributed to the loss of ice-rich material.

This image was taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera onboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft on March 24, 2006. The image is centered at 40,64° South Latitude, 303,49° East Longitude. The image is oriented such that North is 7° to the left of up. The range to the target was 2.044 Km (about 1.270 miles). At this distance the image scale is 2,04 mt (6,69 feet) per pixel, so objects as small as 6,1 mt (20 feet) are resolved. In total this image is 40,90 Km (about 25,41 miles) or 20.081 pixels wide and 11,22 Km (such as 6,97 miles) or 5.523 pixels high. The image was taken at a Local Mars Time of 07:30 and the scene is illuminated from the upper right with a solar incidence angle of 81,4° (this meaning that the Sun was about 8,6° above the horizon).