NASA Mars Odyssey THEMIS Image: Acheron Catena

Image Context:


Context image credit: NASA/Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) Team
[ Find on map: Javascript version ]

[ Find on map: CGI version ]

The THEMIS Image of the Day will be exploring the nomenclature of Mars for the next three weeks.

Acheron Catera

• Catera: chain of craters
• Acheron: river of woe. Acheron is one of the nine

  rivers separating Hades from the land of the

  living. It is across Acheron that Charon ferries

  the dead. Cerberus guards this river. If a person

  is not buried correctly, or does not have the fare

  to pay Charon, his/her soul is doomed to wander

  the banks of Acheron forever.

Acheron Catena is a line of craters found on the flanks of

Alba Patera – a very old volcano. The majority of the

craters appear to have formed by collapse.

Nomenclature Fact of the Day: Earth’s Moon is the only body in

the solar system (besides Earth) that uses the descriptor

Oceanus.

[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