By: Calvin Arroyo, Alicia Bell-Reid, Nicholas Manago, Levias Peterson, Jorden Takushi & Taylor Torres

Are preserved craters most common type of crater found on Mars? Why is our science group question interesting? Our science group question is interesting because… We can significantly find information about Mars’ craters and study details about it. Such as the estimation of how many craters are on mars, and the most common craters on mars. Why is our science group question important? Our science group question is important because… We can find the most common types of crater, we could possibly find out how most of them were formed and when it was formed. If we find interesting facts about how old they were, we could estimate how old mars is. Also, the ejecta from the craters could hint that there may be water on mars.

Group Hypothesis: All people in the group think that preserved craters are the most common on Mars. We think that they are the most common because our group tallied the number of preserved craters, modified craters, and destroyed craters in a preliminary study. The majority of the tallies in that study went to the preserved craters.

Preserved Craters: Near perfect craters Raised rims Looks new Can sometimes see ejecta blanket or central peak Modified Craters: Sometimes crater ejecta is visible but looks eroded Crater may have smooth floor Middle-aged craters Partly filled by sediment Destroyed Craters: Very worn away Rims are broken Almost completely filled in by sediment Very old craters

A crater is a big gash imbedded in the ground. It can look like a perfect circle or a weird shape like an oval type.

Craters can be formed by impact or erosion. A meteor slams into mars creating a very large hole in the ground

Space CraftNASA’s Mars Odyssey CameraTHEMIS Camera Image Type - Visible Images: To see details within the crater. - MOLA: To see context of an image and it’s depth Geologic Features Studied Types of craters. Geologic Regions Focused/Studied Area were craters are mostly found.

Sample Size60 THEMIS Images used to gather data. Categories of data to be collected and Why? Image ID #: Keep track of the specific image analyzed. Latitude/ Longitude: Keep track of the locations and their proximity. Misc. Data: To record any other interesting info not warranted by our necessary data categories but certainly important to our study. Crater Type: To see weather or not preserved craters are the most common on Mars.

Website list: Data collection steps: 1. Go to the website; 2. Click on the “craters” 3. Click on crater thumbnails 4. Click to view in mars image data 5. Determine crater type 6. Log the image #, Lat. Lon. 7. Record any misc observations

Data Chart THEMIS Image IDLongitude (E/W)Latitude (N/S)Type of CraterMisc. Observations V P-D2 V P-M3 V P-M2 V M1 V D1 V D1 V P-M2 V D2 V P-D2 V M1 V M1 V P3 Preserved and 2 Destroyed V P3 Preserved and Channels. V P1 Preserved and Wind features V M1 Modified V D6 Destroyed V D8 Destroyed V D1 Destroyed V P1 Modified and 9 Preserved V P10 Preserved 6 Modified 8 Destroyed

Chart Cont.

Location on Preserved Craters

Bar Graph

Discussion

Potential Errors Miscounted The Craters. Misidentifying the type of craters. Misidentified the regions the craters were in. Recording image ID Typed data wrong

Conclusion

Research Question Are preserved craters most common type of crater found on Mars? The data shows that there are mostly preserved craters on mars so we could tell that mars is really not that old of a planet.

Conclusion Questions What did you learn from the data you collected? Refer to your science investigation question. What we learned from collecting the data is that it takes time to record your data. Most importantly is that we found more preserved craters than any other. It showed this in our data chart that our group did. What would you do differently to make your investigation better? (think about the data collected and the way you analyzed it, or the question you formed) Explain what scientific questions could branch off of this study to further scientific research about Mars? We think that we could have collected more data to make our answer more accurate. The reason for this is we only got about 60 THEMIS images. A scientific question that could branch off of this study would be, is or was there water on mars? This could prove there is or was water on mars.

The End