Crater within Tempe Terra, Mars, containing inverted channels

Filed under pretty pictures, Mars, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, geology

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A Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Context Camera (CTX) image of most of a 44-kilometer-diameter crater within Tempe Terra. The crater includes numerous examples of inverted topography.

NASA / JPL / MSSS

Inverted topography describes places where channels that likely originated as depressions in which water flowed were filled with sediment that, once it lithified, proved more resistant to erosion than the country rock.