Years of observing combined into best-yet look at Mars canyon

This canyon system on Mars, named Valles Marineris, stretches as far as the distance from California to New York. Steep walls nearly as high as Mount Everest give way to numerous side canyons, possibly carved by water. In places, walls have shed massive landslides spilling far out onto the canyon floor.
A simulated fly-through using the newly assembled imagery is available online at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/missions/odyssey/20060313.html.

The fly-through plus tools for wandering across and zooming into the large image are at http://themis.asu.edu.

"We picked Valles Marineris to make this first mosaic because it's probably the most complex, interesting feature on the entire planet," said Dr. Phil Christensen of Arizona State University, Tempe. He is the principal investigator for Mars Odyssey's versatile camera, the Thermal Emission Imaging System. "To understand many of the processes on Mars -- erosion, landsliding and the effects of water -- you really need to have a big-picture view but still be able to see the details."

Small parts of the canyon have been seen at higher resolution, but at 100 meters (328 feet) per pixel, the new view has sharper resolution than any previous imaging of the entire canyon.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Arizona State University

This scene comes from "Flight Through Mariner Valley" video produced for NASA by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The video takes viewers on a simulated flight into Valles Marineris, where they explore its scenic wonders as their imaginary scout ship dives low over landslides and races through winding canyons.

The video features high-resolution images from Arizona State University's Thermal Emission Imaging System multi-band camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey. The images, which show details as small as 300 meters (1,000 feet) across, were taken at infrared wavelengths during the Martian daytime. Scientists joined hundreds of individual frames from the camera into a giant mosaic, then colored the mosaic to approximate how Mars would appear to the human eye.

To give the mosaic depth and height, moviemakers fitted it to a computerized topographic model for Valles Marineris. This was developed using hundreds of thousands of altitude measurements by the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter, an instrument on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft.

In addition to the completed mosaic of Valles Marineris images, the camera team has also prepared an online data set of nearly the entire planet of Mars at 232 meters (760 feet) per pixel, the most detailed global view of the red planet. The team plans to post 100-meter-resolution mosaics of other regions of Mars in coming months.

Odyssey reached Mars in 2001. The Thermal Emission Imaging System began observing the planet systematically in February 2002 both in visible wavelengths and in infrared wavelengths, which are better for seeing surface details through Mars' atmospheric dust. As the spacecraft passes over an area, the camera records images of swaths 32 kilometers wide (20 miles wide). More than three years of observations made at infrared wavelengths during Martian daytime are combined into the assembled view of Valles Marineris and the global image data set.

Mars Odyssey is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, is the prime contractor for the project and built the spacecraft. The orbiter began an extended mission in August 2004 after successfully completing its primary mission.

JPL News Release