The camera team for NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor mission is beginning daily Internet postings of pictures that showcase the rich diversity of martian landscapes. The first “Mars Orbiter Camera Picture of the Day” shows frost-covered sand dunes in the springtime as they begin to defrost.
April 8th, 2003
Martian Map Quest Astrobiology Magazine
Mars Global Surveyor has been orbiting the red planet since Sept. 12, 1997. The mission has examined the entire Mars surface and provided a wealth of information about the planet’s atmosphere and interior. A new batch of high resolution photos, taken between February and July 2002, were added online this month and they bring the total number of images in the online gallery to more than 123,800. The images are available from the Mars Orbiter Camera Gallery.
April 4th, 2003
Prolific NASA Orbiter Adds Thousands of Photos to Mars Album
The winds of Mars leave their marks on many of the 11,664 new pictures being posted on the Internet today by the camera team for NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor mission. In one image, the pattern of sand dunes on a patch of southern-hemisphere desert resembles scales on a fish. On a larger scale, full-globe Mars images show wispy water ice clouds shaped by winds as the seasons change. Other new images reveal details of features such as gullies, landslides and seasonal frost.
March 6th, 2003
Scientists Say Mars Has a Liquid Iron Core
New information about what is inside Mars shows the red planet has a molten liquid iron core, confirming the interior of the planet has some similarity to Earth and Venus. Researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., analyzing three years of radio tracking data from the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, concluded that Mars has not cooled to a completely solid iron core, rather its interior is made up of either a completely liquid iron core or a liquid outer core with a solid inner core. Their results are published in the March 7, 2003 online issue of the journal Science.
October 15th, 2002
Zoom in on Mars: New Highly Detailed Images
Mars Global Surveyor passed a milestone earlier this month when its 100,000th image was added to NASA’s online image gallery for the mission. The total number of photographs is now more than twice the combined quantity supplied by the Viking orbiters in the 1970s. More interesting is the detail included in the new images. One is said to be among the most detailed views ever provided of the Red Planet. Another reveals new clues about a mysterious “Inca City” on Mars.
October 8th, 2002
NASA Adds to Mars Global Surveyor Photo Album
One of the highest-resolution images ever obtained from the red planet– a view of gullies in a crater in the Newton Basin– is among an astounding group of 18,812 images being added to NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor online image gallery today.
September 5th, 2002
Virtual trip to Mars launches lesson on problem-solving The Herald
Northside Elementary School students took a cosmic trip to Mars, the red planet, on Wednesday without having to leave the earth’s atmosphere. The school is the only one in the 5th Congressional District to receive NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, which is funded through a grant awarded to Northside, said Principal Linda Crute. Students have the opportunity to become actively involved in the Mars Global Surveyor mission by learning about the Martian environment and making discoveries along with mission science teams.
May 9th, 2002
Mars Global Surveyor Mission Reveals Precarious Terrain
Now in its extended mission, the Mars Global Surveyor is revealing intriguing features of our neighbor as a planet once veiled by enormous dust storms. The latest images also reveal that Mars’ northern pole may hold only half as much water in its ice cap than previously thought, along with unusual geologic features that tell of their age and the planet’s wind patterns. The Surveyor or MGS as it is called continues to add to its photo archive of over 93,000 images of the Red Planet.
May 9th, 2002
Martian Scrapbook Astronomy.com
Scientists and engineers have been busy putting together the newest volume of the photo anthology produced by the Mars Global Surveyor mission. The latest release of 15,251 images expands the collection to over 93,000 snapshots. Every six months, Malin Space Science Systems, which operates Global Surveyor’s Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC), shares a new group of images after preparing them for public release. The latest compilation comes from the first six months of the orbiter’s extended mission, which began February 1, 2001.
May 8th, 2002
Shifting Dunes and Squiggly Lines on Mars
The Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, which has been orbiting the Red Planet since 1997, was relegated to the media shadows early this year when it’s new sister craft, Mars Odyssey, began returning pictures and found intriguing evidence for water ice near the surface of Mars. However, Surveyor, also called MGS, is alive and well and still producing remarkable photographs with its onboard Mars Orbiter Camera. Most of the pictures do not individually provide for important findings, but many are interesting nonetheless.