NASA Mars Odyssey THEMIS Image: Olympus Mons At Night

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Context image credit: NASA/Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) Team
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This nighttime IR image is of a portion of the flank of

Olympus Mons. In last week’s Arsia Mons flow images, it

was easy to delinate lava flows. While this image is also

of a region of extensive flows, it is nearly impossible

to identify any flows. This illustrates one of the problems

imaging high altitudes in nighttime IR, the surface is

almost as cold as the atmosphere and is emitting very little

signal back to the IR camera.

[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