NASA Mars Odyssey THEMIS Image: Martian Tracery

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Context image credit: NASA/Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) Team
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Deep in the southern highlands, the work of innumerable dust devils produces a cobweb-like pattern of tracks across the Martian surface. The spinning atmospheric vortices commonly called dust devils are like mini tornadoes that vacuum up the dust from the surface to expose darker material in their wake. Dust devil tracks are among the most recent features on Mars and are continually forming.

[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