Mars Picture of the Day: Buttes South of Cerberus

Mars Global Surveyor Mars Orbiter Camera

MGS MOC Release No. MOC2-340, 24 April 2003

NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems

This Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) image
shows rocky, dust-mantled buttes in a terrain similar to the
Monument Valley of Utah/Arizona, located southwest of the
Cerberus region. Boulders the size of large houses have tumbled
down into the valleys between the buttes.
The picture covers an area
about 1.5 km (just under 1 mi)
wide near
3.3°N, 212.4°W.
Sunlight illuminates the scene from the
left.

Malin Space Science Systems and the California Institute of Technology
built the MOC using spare hardware from the Mars Observer mission.
MSSS operates the camera from its facilities in San Diego, California.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Mars Surveyor Operations Project
operates the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft with its industrial
partner, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, from facilities in Pasadena,
California and Denver, Colorado.