NASA Mars Picture of the Day: Fretted Terrain

Mars Global Surveyor Mars Orbiter Camera

MGS MOC Release No. MOC2-885, 20 October 2004

NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems

This red wide angle
Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC)
image shows a portion of the fretted terrain north
of eastern Arabia Terra. As described earlier this
month in
“Craters in Fretted Terrain,” the fretted terrains of Mars
are the broken-up, blocky areas where the heavily cratered
martian highlands transition to the lightly-cratered,
lower elevation, northern plains. The landforms in the
top half of the picture shown here comprise a portion
of the fretted terrain. This picture has a resolution of
about 243 meters (266 yards) per pixel and covers an
area about 248 kilometers (154 miles) wide. The long
valley that runs diagonal from lower center toward right
center in the bottom half of the picture is Auqakuh
Vallis. This image is located
near 32°N, 299°W, and is illuminated by
sunlight from the left/lower left. Another view of
landforms in the fretted terrain was featured
yesterday in
“Fretted Terrain Craters.”

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.