NASA Mars Odyssey THEMIS Image: Basaltic Crater in Color IR

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Context image credit: NASA/Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) Team
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This image shows two representations of the same infra-red image near Nili Fosse in the the Isidis region of Mars. On the left is a grayscale image showing surface temperature, and on the right is a false-color composite made from 3 individual THEMIS bands. The false-color image is colorized using a technique called decorrelation stretch (DCS), which emphasizes the spectral differences between the bands to highlight compositional variations.

In many cases craters trap sand in their topographic depressions, interrupting the sand’s migration across the Martian surface. This image is particularly interesting because there appears to be more than 1 type of sand in the bottom of this crater and in the hummocky terrain near the bottom of the image. The pink/magenta areas are characteristic of a basaltic composition, but there are also orange areas that are likely caused by the presence of andesite. These two compositions, basalt and andesite, are some of the most common found on Mars.

[Source: ASU THEMIS Science Team]

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA’s Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) was developed by Arizona State University, Tempe, in collaboration with Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing. The THEMIS investigation is led by Dr. Philip Christensen at Arizona State University. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, is the prime contractor for the Odyssey project, and developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and from JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Arizona State University