A newly released image from a Mars satellite offers a glimpse into the complex past of the now dry and dusty world.
From high above the surface of Mars, the orbiting High Resolution Imaging Experiment homes in on the Danielson Crater, just north of the Mars equator. This region is intensely interesting to space geologists because of the layered sediments that line the crater.Layered deposits can be found all over Mars, but the Danielson Crater contains some of the most spectacular and best preserved.
The evenness of these layers means they cannot have been created by random processes, such as impact events. Rather, scientists think that a regular, repeated process deposited the layers."The rock was formed millions or billions of years ago when loose sediments settled into the crater, one layer at a time, and were later cemented in place,""Cyclical variations in the sediment properties made some layers more resistant to erosion than others.
On the small scale, there are large regions of rock that are heavily fractured. Scientists have studied these fractures and determined that, since the pieces fit together perfectly, this occurred after the deposits had already turned to rock.It's unclear exactly how the deposits formed, but the deposits could have been made on annual timescales, or even longer.
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