Portrait of a Martian crater

Swept by wind and apparently sculpted by water, this area within the Red Planet’s 140-kilometer-wide Gale crater was imaged by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s HiRISE camera.

Revealing features only a half-meter wide, the image depicts part of the floor of the crater (top), which may once have held a lake, as well as an overlying mound of layered terrain (center and bottom) that probably includes volcanic ash as well as sediments deposited by water.