A fresh crater in Mars' Tharsis region, imaged by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's CTX and CRISM cameras on January 13, 2007. The crater measures ~100 m in diameter, but a halo (likely the result of an airburst prior to impact) measures more than 2.5 km across.
Interestingly, the crater is not located near the center of the halo, which suggests that the impactor entered Mars' atmosphere at an angle. (The crater is circular because the energy released by the impactor is effectively a point source.)
The likely direction of travel was from right to left (in the original image orientation, NE to SW). This is because the crater is located along the right edge of the halo - the impactor continued dead ahead...
But the extremely hot rising air in the airburst fireball somewhat countered its downward momentum, carrying it about a kilometer further downrange. The reason the halo disturbed less material on the left is probably due to a couple of reasons.
First, the bulk of the shockwave probably reflected off the surface, reducing its effectiveness at lifting dust downrange. Second, the airburst appears to have impacted close to a low ridge, which might have prevented part of the shockwave moving downrange along the surface.
If you notice, a couple of rays on the left side correspond to low areas along this ridge - a good sign that this ridge was blocking energy from continuing downrange!
Here's maybe a way to show how I'm interpreting this in a graphical way.
Small craters like this can be used to probe surface composition in an otherwise dusty area. Tharsis is a very, VERY dusty region, and geologically young lava flows containing important information about Mars' volcanic evolution are buried under that dust.
The darker rocks at the impact crater are pulverized rock from those lava flows, so collecting spectral data on small craters like this throughout the region with CRISM can tell us a lot about how lava composition changes through time.
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