Chaos can be beautiful! This image covers rocky plains in a low-latitude area of Mars, which lie adjacent to pits containing scattered blocks of high-standing material, called chaos terrains.

The plains appear chaotic too, especially in enhanced color images that reveal the diverse range of rock compositions present. A closeup highlights this diversity, showing a range of colors arrayed around the western edge of a 1.3 kilometer-wide impact crater near the northern end of our full image. While the crater interior is shadowed in our late afternoon picture, the flat surrounding plains are well illuminated.

Cratering is itself chaotic, potentially altering rock compositions and randomly rearranging preexisting rocks, but with the benefit that it exposes them at the surface for our orbiting robotic eyes to see.

Written by: James Wray  (2 March 2026)