One of the highest-resolution images ever obtained
from the red planet– a view of gullies in a crater in the
Newton Basin– is among an astounding group of 18,812
images being added to NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor online
image gallery today.
The addition brings the total number of Global
Surveyor archived images to 112,218, more than twice the
number of pictures of Mars acquired by the two Viking
orbiters of the 1970’s.
The images are available at:
http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/e7_e12_captioned_rel/
Featured images include gullies from two different
impact craters in Newton Basin in Sirenum Terra. One image
has a resolution of 1.5 meters (5 feet) per pixel which
means scientists can study features roughly the size of a
school bus. Another image highlights wintertime frost on
the crater wall and dark sand dunes on the floor.
The newly archived images were acquired between August
2001 and January 2002 and highlight visual weather events
such as planet-wide dust storms and the springtime retreat
of the south polar seasonal frost cap. Other images are
being used by scientists to evaluate landing sites for the
Mars Exploration Rover mission scheduled to launch in 2003.
Global Surveyor, launched Nov. 7, 1996, entered the
Martian orbit on Sept. 12, 1997. The mission has studied
the entire Martian surface, atmosphere, and interior, and
has returned more data about the red planet than all other
Mars missions combined.
Mars Global Surveyor is managed by the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory for NASA’s Office of Space Science, Washington,
D.C. JPL is a division of the California Institute of
Technology in Pasadena. JPL’s industrial partner is
Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, which developed and
operates the spacecraft. The Mars Orbiter Camera is
operated by Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, Calif.
