NASA Mars Odyssey THEMIS Image: Icaria Planum

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Context image credit: NASA/Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) Team
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An unnamed crater west of Icaria Planum hosts an even smaller crater with interesting features both inside and out. A strange pattern of light-toned surfaces appears to be associated with the ejecta of this crater. Within the crater, the ubiquitous high latitude ìpasted on terrainî is evident along with gullies, a combination of features that tends to support the idea that the pasted-on material is dirty snow whose melting leads to the formation of gullies. Completing the ensemble of features are accumulations of dark sand within the rugged topography of the crater floor.

[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