Mars Odyssey THEMIS Image: Northeastern Meridiani

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Context image credit: NASA/Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) Team
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The remarkable terrain at the “center” of the planet (0 degrees latitude and longitude) is called Meridiani Planum. It hosts a rare occurrence of gray crystalline hematite that will be visited by one of the two Mars Exploration Rovers leaving Earth this June. Just to the ENE of the hematite deposit is the eroded, layered terrain seen in this image, which lacks spectral evidence for hematite.

[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