Double blast on Mars

[n2doc]

A photo taken Jan. 10 with NASA’s HiRISE camera is even more striking. The image below shows two symmetrical, neatly overlapping craters that must have formed at the same time.


The assailing rocks could have been parts of a once-intact body that broke up on its way through Mars’ thin atmosphere before slamming into the surface. Several known celestial bodies, including the rubbly asteroid Itokawa and the chicken-leg-shaped comet Hartley 2, would likely break in two and form simultaneous impact craters if they smacked into a planet.

Although planets suffer fewer slings and arrows now than they did in the solar system’s youth, Mars is headed for another rough time. One of its moons, Phobos, will collide with the planet in a few tens of millions of years, breaking up in the process to form more wonky-shaped impact craters.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/03/mars-double-craters/

[shraby]

1. Looks like an egg dividing.

[Orrex]

2. That reminds me of a woman I used to know

She studied meteors and meteoroids and that sort of thing.

[stellanoir]

3. psssst. . . it's upside down

check it out

mars is winking at us all !!!

[Jackpine Radical]

4. I think that's where their rockets took off from

when they invaded Earth in 1938.

[Thor_MN]

5. Mars' Backside?

[formercia]

6. Mooned by Mars

This has possibilities.

[pokerfan]

7. I can't decide which camera is my favorite

HiRISE or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Reconnaissance_Orbiter">LROC

[Ian David]

8. This is what caused it...