NASA Mars Picture of the Day: Exhumed Ridge Pattern

Mars Global Surveyor Mars Orbiter Camera

MGS MOC Release No. MOC2-490, 21 September 2003

NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems

The lower half of this June 2003
Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) picture
shows an array of ridges arranged in a somewhat polygonal
pattern. These ridges are being exhumed from within a blanket
of material that covers the region south (toward the bottom)
of this image. The origin of the ridges is not known; they might,
for example, have started out as cracks and joints in the overlying
material that became filled with coarser or cemented material
that was left standing as solid ridges when the overlying
sediment was eroded away.
This picture is located
near 11.0°N, 147.8°W, and covers an area 3 km (1.9 mi)
across. Sunlight illuminates the scene from the lower 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.