Mars Picture of the Day: Gullied Crater Wall

Mars Global Surveyor Mars Orbiter Camera

MGS MOC Release No. MOC2-371, 25 May 2003

NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems

Gullies are common in some regions on middle- and polar-latitude
slopes, such as crater walls.
This March 2003 Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) image
shows gullies on the north wall of a crater in the Atlantis Chaos
region near 34.3°S, 178.0°W. The gullies might have formed
by flow of a fluid—perhaps liquid water—sometime in the geologically
recent martian past.
Sunlight illuminates the scene from the
upper 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.