NASA Mars Picture of the Day: Carbon Dioxide Landforms

Mars Global Surveyor Mars Orbiter Camera

MGS MOC Release No. MOC2-670, 19 March 2004

NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems

The martian south polar residual ice cap is mostly made of
frozen carbon dioxide. There is no place on Earth that a person can
go to see the landforms that would be produced by erosion
and sublimation of hundreds or thousands of cubic kilometers of carbon
dioxide. Thus, the south polar cap of Mars is
as alien as alien can get. This image, acquired in
January 2004 by the
Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC),
shows how the cap appears in summer as carbon dioxide is
subliming away, creating a wild pattern of pits, mesas,
and buttes. Darker surfaces may be areas where the ice
contains impurities, such as dust, or where the surface
has been roughened by the removal of ice. This image is located
near 86.3°S, 0.8°W.
This picture covers an area about 3 km (1.9 mi) across.
Sunlight illuminates the scene from the top/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.