There are tributes to filmmaker Orson Welles in both his birthplace of Kenosha, Wisconsin, and Hollywood, where he died.
Several U.S. states, as well as Spain, Croatia and Morocco, are home to Welles memorials.
But often overlooked is an out-of-this-world honor: Orson Welles Crater on Mars.
The designation of the circular depression on the Red Planet was approved 15 years ago by the International Astronomical Union, inspired, no doubt, by Welles’ legendary 1938 The War of the Worlds broadcast about a Martian invasion.
Past IAU designations include Martian craters named for scientists Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton and Carl Sagan, and for science-fiction notables Isaac Asimov, H.G. Wells and Gene Roddenberry.
Orson Welles Crater is an impact crater located in the area designated by geologists studying Mars as the Coprates quadrangle. It is 77 miles (124 km) in diameter.
Images taken by the Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter revealed dunes on the crater floor, clay minerals and small curved channels, which lead geologists to believe it contained a lake some 4 billion years ago. The water was eventually lost due to the thin Martian atmosphere and weak gravity.
Researchers at the annual Planetary Geologic Mappers Meeting in Flagstaff, Arizona, in June 2017 theorized that the impact that formed Orson Welles Crater may have penetrated an aquifer or subsurface ice leading to initial outflow and incision of Shalbatana Vallis. Following the impact, the plains unit was resurfaced with weakly consolidated (potentially ice-rich) materials.
A closeup image of the dunes on the Orson Welles Crater floor can be found at https://images.nasa.gov/details-PIA15566.html
Other images of Orson Welles Crater can be found at https://www.uahirise.org/ESP_047515_1800 and https://www.uahirise.org/PSP_008391_1790
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