NASA Mars Picture of the Day: Boulder Tracks

Mars Global Surveyor Mars Orbiter Camera

MGS MOC Release No. MOC2-649, 27 February 2004

NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems

On some fine-grained martian slopes, rolling boulders
make tracks.
This Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC)
image shows an example of boulder tracks on a crater wall
near 35.8°S, 158.5°W.
Sunlight illuminates the scene from the upper right; the
150 m scale bar is also about 492 feet long.

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.