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Date Entered: 28 November 1989
Date Last Revised: 5 November 1993
The site lies at a contact between ancient cratered terrain and plains materials that may be flood lavas. However, the resolution is too low to confirm the origin of these plains. Many well-developed valley systems are present in the cratered terrain and debouch with a confluent geometry at the contact, so a sedimentary origin cannot be ruled out. If the plains are volcanic, they are likely to be underlain in some locations by waterlain sediments. A fresh 35 km crater with a broad ejecta blanket excavates into the plains material near the contact.
Scientific Rationale
To be determined.
Objectives
Ancient cratered terrain, intermediate volcanics and/or waterlain sediments.
Potential Problems
To be determined.
Trafficability
To be determined.
Estimated Traverse Distance
To be determined.
Exobiology Significance
It is probable that the plains unit is younger because it appears to embay the valleys along the basin margin, and to overlap deposits of the cratered terrain. The duration of hydrologic activity may have been prolonged, judging from the higher order tributaries developed within the valley systems, and the apparent bracketing of valley formation between two major periods of impact cratering.
The proposed landing target is at 24.8 deg. S, 265.8 deg. W on the ejecta blanket of a ~35 km diameter. This site is of particular interest to Exobiology in providing an opportunity to collect potentially fossiliferous deposits that may lie beneath the plains unit. Circumnavigation of the ejecta blanket of the crater at the proposed site by a rover would provide an opportunity to evaluate the appropriateness of the proposed facies model and to determine lithologic trends within the basin. The southern part of the ejecta blanket should provide access to finer-grained, central basin lithologies, while more northern locations, closer to the basin margin, are more likely include coarser-grained, fluvial-deltaic and/or marginal lacustrine deposits that may bear fossils.
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