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Crater Collapse
After formation, craters often undergo modification as their walls partially collapse. This unnamed crater, high in Mercury's northern hemisphere, has been imaged before at high resolution, its rough interior contrasting with the smooth plains in which it lies. In this image, at equally high resolution, we can see the small normal faults that ring the crater's perimeter, manifest as linear, sharp cliffs that face the crater interior. Faults like these have facilitated the downward movement of material from this and other craters' walls, but are often too small to see without high-resolution images.
Date acquired: October 4, 2012
Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington