LUCKNOW: ‘Lal’, ‘Mursan’ and ‘Hilsa’. These are the names given to three craters on the surface of Mars recently discovered by Ahmedabad-based Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), that hint at the red planet’s wet past. Lal has been named after legendary cosmic ray physicist from Varanasi, the late Professor Devendra Lal. The other two have been named after Mursan town in UP’s Hathras district, and Hilsa town in Nalanda district of Bihar.
PRL director Anil Bhardwaj told TOI they are named in accordance with international guidelines which state that small craters should be named after small towns and bigger ones after renowned personalities. Lal, a pioneer in the field of earth and planetary science, served as PRL director from 1972 to 1983.
The craters reside within the Tharsis volcanic region, a vast volcanic plateau centered near the equator in the western hemisphere of Mars. The region is home to the largest volcanoes in the solar system. ‘Lal’ is the largest and spans around 65km. It is covered with lava, but there is geophysical evidence of material other than lava in this crater with a 45m thick sedimentary deposit in the subsurface. The discovery provides compelling proof that water has moved large volumes of sediments into the crater. Two small superimposed craters on either side, ‘Mursan’ and ‘Hilsa’, provide timeline for the infilling process of ‘Lal’.
According to an article published by scientists Rajiv Bharti, Isaac Smith, S K Mishra, N Srivastava and Shital Shukla, the discovery was made within the Mangala crater of Mars using SHARAD (Mars SHAllow RADar sounder), a subsurface sounding radar mounted on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter probe, a spacecraft designed to search for the existence of water on Mars as part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Programme.
Source Agencies
