NASA Mars Odyssey THEMIS Image: Remnants of MFF

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Context image credit: NASA/Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) Team
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Through the haze of a dissipating dust storm in the southern hemisphere, the strange landscape of the eroding Medusa Fossae Formation is still evident. In the southern portion of this image, small mounds of sedimentary material are all that remains of a once more continuous layer. This former layer was deposited on a pre-existing landscape that was itself already heavily eroded and disrupted.

[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