Mars Picture of the Day: Frosted Chasma Boreale Dunes
Mars Global Surveyor – Mars Orbiter Camera
MGS MOC Release No. MOC2-390, 13 June 2003
![]() NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems |
This is a Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC)
view of frost-covered sand dunes in Chasma Boreale in
the early northern spring season. Dark spots, some of them
with bright halos of re-precipitated frost, have formed
as the dunes begin to defrost. Most of the frost is
carbon dioxide which freezes out of the atmosphere during
the cold martian polar winters.
This picture is located near
84.7°N, 358.8°W, and is illuminated
from the lower 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.