Orcus Patera is a region on the surface of the planet

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. It is also known as the "Red Planet", because of its orange-red appearance. Mars is a desert-like rocky planet with a tenuous carbon dioxide () atmosphere. At the average surface level the atmosph ...

first photographed by

Mariner 4 Mariner 4 (Mariner C-3, together with Mariner 3 known as Mariner-Mars 1964) was the Mariner program, fourth in a series of spacecraft intended for planetary exploration in a flyby mode. It was designed to conduct closeup scientific observations ...

. Of unknown formation, whether by volcanic, tectonic, or cratering causes, the region includes a depression about long, wide, surrounded by a rim up to high.

Description

Orcus Patera was first imaged by

. It is a depression about long, wide, and about deep but with a relatively smooth floor. It has a rim up to high. It has experienced aeolian processes, and has some small craters and

graben In geology, a graben () is a depression (geology), depressed block of the Crust (geology), crust of a planet or moon, bordered by parallel normal faults. Etymology ''Graben'' is a loan word from German language, German, meaning 'ditch' or 't ...

structures. However, it is not known how the patera originally formed. Theories include volcanic, tectonic, or cratering events. A study in 2000 that incorporated new results from

Mars Global Surveyor ''Mars Global Surveyor'' (MGS) was an American Robotic spacecraft, robotic space probe developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It launched November 1996 and collected data from 1997 to 2006. MGS was a global mapping mission that examined ...

along with older

Viking Vikings were seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway, and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded, and settled throughout parts of Europe.Roesdahl, pp. 9� ...

data, did not come out clearly in favor of either volcanic or cratering processes.Orcus Patera : Impact Crater or Volcanic Caldera? (2000)
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Mars Express ''Mars Express'' is a space exploration mission by the European Space Agency, European Space Agency (ESA) exploring the planet Mars and its moons since 2003, and the first planetary mission attempted by ESA. ''Mars Express'' consisted of two ...

observed this region in 2005, yielding a

digital terrain model A digital elevation model (DEM) or digital surface model (DSM) is a 3D computer graphics representation of elevation data to represent terrain or overlaying objects, commonly of a planet, Natural satellite, moon, or asteroid. A "global DEM" refer ...

and color pictures.

Images

Viking

Mars Express

Location

Orcus Patera is west of

Olympus Mons Olympus Mons (; ) is a large shield volcano on Mars. It is over high as measured by the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA), about 2.5 times the elevation of Mount Everest above sea level. It is Mars's tallest volcano, its tallest planetary mou ...

and east of Elysium Mons. It is about halfway between those two volcanoes, and east and north of

Gale crater Gale is a crater, and probable dry lake, at in the northwestern part of the Aeolis quadrangle on Mars. It is in diameter and estimated to be about 3.5–3.8 billion years old. The crater was named after Walter Frederick Gale, an amateur a ...

External links

ESA - Mars’s mysterious elongated crater (27 August 2010)Google Mars - Orcus PateraCrater in Orcus Patera (MRO HiRISE)
*http://www.uahirise.org/results.php?keyword=Orcus+Patera&order=release_date&submit=Search
Orcus Patera : Impact Crater or Volcanic Caldera? (2000)

References

{{Portal bar, Solar System Surface features of Mars Depressions (geology)