Dickinson Crater on Venus - UNIVERSE

This November 1996 image from Magellan shows Dickinson, an impact crater in the northeastern Atalanta region of Venus. The image is approximately 115 miles (185 kilometers) wide at the base and 43 miles (69 kilometers) in diameter. The crater is complex, characterized by a partial central ring and a floor flooded by radar-dark and radar-bright materials. Hummocky, rough-textured ejecta extend all around the crater, except to the west. The lack of ejecta to the west may indicate that the impactor that produced the crater was an oblique impact from the west. Extensive radar-bright flows that emanate from the crater's eastern walls may represent large volumes of impact melt, or they may be the result of volcanic material released from the subsurface during the cratering event.

Magellan was the first planetary spacecraft launched from a space shuttle. Now the agency is planning an even more adventurous mission–DAVINCI, which will be the first mission to study Venus using both spacecraft flybys and a descent probe.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Source: Dickinson Crater on Venus | NASA