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15-Apr-2008 Like Martian Water for Chocolate
This false-color infrared image portrays a large impact crater viewed from orbit. The crater is nearly filled with sediment that is cracked into irregular, shardlike pieces inside the crater rim. In the middle is a flat-topped mesa. Both the crater sediment and the surrounding terrain are dotted with smaller impact craters.
If you smacked a frozen chocolate bar on a table, it would break into bite-size pieces resembling the terrain in this Martian crater. To a planetary scientist, this pattern is a tantalizing clue that the ground once contained water ice. When the frozen terrain cracked, in some places the ice melted into flows chock full of sediment. Perhaps the ground is still filled with layers of near-surface ice.
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