Mars Odyssey Image: Global Neutron View

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Observations by NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey show a global view of Mars in intermediate-energy, or epithermal, neutrons.

Soil enriched in hydrogen is indicated by the deep blue colors on the map, which show a low intensity of epithermal neutrons. The view shown here is a map of measurements made during the first week of mapping by NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft in February 2002 using the neutron spectrometer instrument. The central meridian in this projection is zero degrees longitude.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA’s Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The neutron spectrometer was supplied by the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, N.M., and is one of the instruments in the gamma ray spectrometer instrument suite, which was supplied by the University of Arizona, Tucson. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, is the prime contractor for the project, and developed and built the orbiter. See http://grs.lpl.arizona.edu for more information. Odyssey mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and from JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona