Crashed disc on Mars appears on MRO image

I'd like to add an alternative view.

The main article link here:
https://www.theblackvault.com/casefiles/...mber-2006/

starts out with a deliberatlely leading or misleading headline: "Crashed Disc-Shaped Object"

I had a real-world example very recently. I was looking at an old family photo, one which was very familiar to me, but one tiny detail was quite ambiguous and somewhat blurry, as well as being partially obscured by the surface texture of the paper on which it was printed. I figured out a way to approximately remove the effect of the paper texture, clarifying the image to an extent. Suddenly I saw what it was.

Next I needed another pair of eyes to look at the newly cleaned-up image and tell me what they saw. There was only one other living relative I could reasonably ask, so I had just one shot at this. I could not afford to get it wrong. So I took great pains not to say anything at all about what I thought I saw. I didn't muddy the waters by saying the equivalent of "Hey, look at this crashed disc-shaped object!". That would have made asking for a second opinion worthless.

Likewise, the only way to get at what is really shown in the Mars photos is to discard any preconceived notions about what to expect. Just walk in there cold, without expectations. Study the whole image in its entirety, as well as the area under consideration. Do look particularly for similar features elsewhere in the image, if any. By all means narrow down attention to that local area under consideration, since it is a very large image and studying each tiny part in detail could take months.

A significantly larger view of the area. Looking at the photo shows many semi circular dunes https://www.theblackvault.com/casefiles/...mber-2006/

Everyone wants it to be aliens; me too, buts it is likely just a sand dune.

Here's an offhand comment on the photograph by a scientist supposedly expert in Mars imagery. I personally don't put much credence in it. Notably, he doesn't claim it is a digital fake - just an example of "pareidolea" (seeing faces in random arrangements or natural arrangement like clouds or sand dunes or whatnot). I just don't think so for this image, because of the very perfect arc shown at the end of the trench. 

From https://california18.com/no-there-is-no-...110472021/:

"It’s a classic image on Mars, it’s true it takes a weird shape and it’s fun, comments the astrophysicist François Forget, research director at the CNRS, contacted by Numerama. It’s both funny and not at all enigmatic for me. If we go look for the original photo and zoom out, we realize that the whole area is like this."

(wide-area panoramic photograph)      My comment: So what?

No, there is no crashed UFO on Mars in a NASA photo
A UFO, really? Not yet.
According to the scientist, this shape can correspond to several elements found on Mars (depending on the latitude on the planet):

A graben, that is to say a collapse fault;
A collapsed lava tube (a lava tunnel);
A canyon formed because of the ice.
For the astrophysicist, ” what is absolutely certain is that these little croissants, like the piece of the ‘saucer’, are dunes. They are everywhere on Mars, there is no ambiguity. We saw them from near, from afar, our rovers spend their time bypassing dunes like this one ».

“Our rovers spend their time bypassing dunes like this one”

It appears he is talking here mainly about the trench and the narrow shadowed shapes observed to intrude crosswise across it. I agree that the trench-crossing shapes leading up to the saucer look to be probably dunes. That was also the opinion of the researcher who discovered the image.

Forget doesn't specifically comment in any detail on the actual perfectly saucer-shaped object partly buried at the end of the trench, which is the focus of this whole thing.

I don't really see what I am supposed to see here. There are clearly some marks that may be artificial, but is the idea that a disk crashed end-on to produce that groove?

There are also some lines in the bottom part of the image. If those are part of the same thing, then it rather looks to me like something larger is there, mostly buried.

However, I am not very good at interpreting imagery.

I don't see much similarity there. 

And then, I don't think Nature produces naturally occurring perfect circles of the perfection demonstrated here. It does produce fairly straight and some square or rectangular block-like fractures and weathering in rock layers however.

Fairy rings are one example.  Freak whirlwinds of various sorts probably could.  Actually, it might be my eyesight, but I can't even see a circle at the end of the trench.

I remember, some years ago, there was a big fuss about an image from the surface of Mars that looked like a carved face (just google "face on mars" - lots of images). I was never convinced (not even close) - just some shadows that happened to be in a familiar pattern.

I looked at the picture in the OP and thought - nope, could be anything. Looks natural.