NASA Mars Picture of the Day: South Hemisphere Gullies
Mars Global Surveyor Mars Orbiter Camera
MGS MOC Release No. MOC2-1126, 18 June 2005
 NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems |
This Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) image shows a 1.5 meters per pixel view of gullies formed in material on the walls of an impact crater in the martian southern hemisphere. A liquid, laden with debris, poured down these slopes to form the gullies. Gully erosion cut through a thick mantle that covers the original crater wall, and then cut into the old wall itself. The source of the liquid might have been within the layered material exposed in the crater walls.
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Location near: 46.6°S, 151.8°W |
Image width: ~2 km (~1.2 mi) |
Illumination from: upper left |
Season: Southern Spring |
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.
