A view of the red planet almost completely enveloped in
dust storms is one of 15,251 newly released images from NASA’s
Mars Global Surveyor. These images bring the total number
of snapshots taken by the spacecraft to more than 93,000.
The latest images to be added to the online archive are
from the first phase of the Mars Global Surveyor extended
mission, which began February 1, 2001. Regions that were
poorly covered during the primary mapping mission due to
regional dust storms have now been captured.
The latest images include sand dunes on Mars’ north polar
cap and a 3-D image of layered rock that resembles the
topography of Arizona and Utah.
Also included are two dramatic global views of Mars. The
first view shows the modest yet impressive beginnings of a
regional dust storm, while the other shows the planet’s
geographical features almost completely obscured by multiple
dust storms.
The images are available at:
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs and
http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/E01_E06_sampler2002/
and http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/ .
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. The camera system is operated by Malin
Space Science Systems, San Diego, Calif.
