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Mars mapping begins in earnestMars Global Surveyor has achieved its final orbit and started to map the Red Planet in detail |
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Space Science News home |
Mars mapping begins in earnestMars Global Surveyor has achieved its final orbit and started to map the Red Planet in detail |
 Mar 11, 1999:
The Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft successfully began its prime mapping mission at 4 p.m. Pacific time
March 8, 1999 following a successful firing of its main engine on Feb. 19 to fine-tune its path
around the red planet into a nearly circular, Sun-synchronous orbit.
Right: These two images are synthetic views of Mars made by combining Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) wide angle images from several orbits during the first week of March 1999--during MOC's focus and calibration testing period. The blue and red lines are the edges of the original pictures. Views such as these will be used throughout the MGS Mapping Mission to characterize the changing weather patterns on Mars. Right now, it is northern hemisphere summer on Mars, and the north polar ice cap can be seen at the top of each image. In the view on the left, thick blue-white afternoon water ice clouds can be seen surrounding and obscuring the northern-most of the large volcanoes of the Tharsis Montes region (left), and clouds can also be seen over Lunae Planum (center) and Chryse Planitia (center right). In the right image, faint clouds are seen over Arabia (center left bright region) with somewhat thicker clouds seen over Syrtis Major (dark, triangular region toward the right). Very thick southern winter clouds can be seen "ponded" within the Hellas Basin near the bottom of the frame. "Reaching our mapping orbit has been a long time coming for all involved. We are delighted to finally be able to do this mission as it was designed, in the proper mapping orbit with all the instruments working at their full potential," said Dr. Arden Albee, the Mars Global Surveyor project scientist at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA. |
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The mapping orbit was designed so that Surveyor passes over a given part of Mars at the same local time each orbit. At about 2 p.m. local Mars time, the spacecraft will cross the equator flying northward on the daytime side and about 2 a.m., it will cross the equator flying southward on the nighttime side. This timing is essential for effective interpretation of atmospheric and surface measurements, because it allows scientists to separate local daily variations from longer-term seasonal and annual trends. |
Left During the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) focus and calibration testing period in the first week of March 1999, small pictures of surfaces in the north polar region were used to check the quality of each change in the camera's focus. Some of these pictures showed the north polar permanent ice cap, while others provided a close-up view of some of the dark sand dunes that surround the north polar region. This picture shows the best example. The dunes here are dark and their slip faces--the steep slope on the dune's lee side--is on the left of each dune, indicating wind transport from right to left in this particular location. The substrate between the dunes is bright and has a rough, bumpy texture. The picture covers an area 1000 meters (1094 yards) by 400 meters (437 yards). Illumination is from the lower right.
Mars Global Surveyor is the first mission in a long-term program of Mars exploration known as the Mars Surveyor Program that is managed by JPL for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. JPL's industrial partner is Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, CO, which developed and operates the spacecraft. New images from Global Surveyor taken during last week's camera calibration will be released each day for the rest of this week. Starting next week, new images from the mapping phase will be posted to the Internet on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The images are available at: http://www.msss.com/mars/global_surveyor/camera/images/index.html and http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov There will be no new images during the week of March 29 when the deployment of the spacecraft's high gain antenna is scheduled to occur. |
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Mars Global Surveyor Web Site
A steamy cover-up on the red planet -- New evidence for active volcanism on Mars. Feb. 18, 1999 NASA Space Science News Bugs of Fire -- Spacelab crystallizes a protein from a very weird, and surprisingly common, volcano-loving bug. Scientists hope to discover how these bugs can survive in such extreme conditions. Sept. 16, 1998 NASA Space Science News The Sands of Mars -- Oct. 29, 1998 NASA Space Science News New NASA images of the Martian North Pole -- Oct. 23, 1998 NASA Space Science News New images of volcanoes on Mars and Io -- Oct. 14, 1998 NASA Space Science News The Planetary PhotoJournal -- the latest images from around the solar system JPL Press Release on Martian Sand Dunes Mars Global Surveyor Animations More NASA Space Science News |
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