14 DAY TRIAL // The European Space Agency's (ESA) Mars Express orbiter has recently returned a new set of data, this time depicting a large cluster of relatively young craters on the surface of the Red Planet. The features are located in Ares Vallis, which is located west of the more-famous Meridiani Planum.
The images were collected around May 11, 2011, and represent the cluster as seen from a variety of angles. This helped astronomers and planetary scientists figure out their age and most likely history.
As evidence that large bodies of water flowed through this are billions of years ago, several of the craters are referred to as “ghosts,” meaning that the sharp contours of their edges have been smudged by water erosion.
According to ESA experts, the crater cluster was most likely produced by a large space impactor that disintegrated in the air above Ares Vallis. The explosion scattered smaller pieces of debris all over the place, piercing the surface of the valley at many locations.
