A view of the red planet almost completely enveloped in dust storms is one of 15,251 newly released images from NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor. These images bring the total number of snapshots taken by the spacecraft to more than 93,000. The latest images to be added to the online archive are from the first phase of the Mars Global Surveyor extended mission, which began February 1, 2001. Regions that were poorly covered during the primary mapping mission due to regional dust storms have now been captured.
May 6th, 2002
Mars Global Surveyor Aging Gracefully Cosmiverse.com
Intricate “fixes” from Earth have kept the Mars Global Surveyor working well beyond its original mission. The spacecraft is now in its second extension following a very successful primary mission and is providing scientists with valuable information about how the red planet changes over time. Since there are no service garages in space, mission planners have to perform any needed repairs from the ground, including finding ways to save fuel.
April 30th, 2002
Global Surveyor Continues Its Watch on the Red Planet
Weather reports from Mars, global mapping, inspection of potential landing sites, more data about the red planet than from all previous missions – no problem for the hardworking Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. In fact, the Global Surveyor has been so successful that it earned an extension following conclusion of its prime mapping mission early in 2001. The second extension began in April 2002 and will continue the mission into late 2004.
March 15th, 2002
Our First Martians U.S.News & World Report
For three years, Ken Edgett & Mike Malin have each spent as much as 80 hours a week staring at new images (more than 100,000 so far) gathered by a gadget called MOC, for Mars Orbiter Camera, which has been circling the planet since 1997 aboard the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. The camera, which Malin designed and built for NASA, is a technical triumph that could see a golf cart from 250 miles up. Malin Space Science Systems has been analyzing the stream of images it radios home. Malin and Edgett’s eyewitness reports are part of a continuing revolution in scientists’ view of Mars. In spite of some spectacular failures
February 14th, 2002
Mars bares big hearts; one rising, one sinking
A strange mesa really stands out on the red planet on Valentine’s Day. So does a pit that extends more than a mile in length. The heart-shaped landforms are among thousands of bizarre features spied by the Mars Global Surveyor, a NASA satellite that has conducted photo shoots of the planet for more than four years. The light-colored heart, a mesa in the south polar region, is about 255 meters (279 yards) across, according to NASA. The presence of the mesa suggests that a layer of brighter material once covered the rougher, darker terrain around it.
February 14th, 2002
Surveyor images meteorite impact crater seen by Viking Spaceflight Now
The Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) Extended Mission has included dozens of opportunities to point the spacecraft directly at features of interest so that pictures of things not seen during the earlier Mapping Mission can be obtained. The example shown here is a small meteorite impact crater in northern Tharsis near 17.2 deg N, 113.8 deg W. Viking Orbiter images from the late 1970’s showed at this location what appeared to be a dark patch with dark rays emanating from a brighter center. The MOC team surmised that the dark rays may be indicating the location of a fresh crater formed by impact sometime in the past few centuries (since dark ray are quickly covered by dust falling out of the martian atmosphere).
February 13th, 2002
Global Surveyor sees changes of Martian ice cap Spaceflight Now
Extended mission operations for the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) has provided thousands of opportunities to image sites previously seen by the camera. Often, these are chances to see if anything on the planet has changed. The most surprising changes were documented starting in August 2001, when the south polar cap emerged from winter darkness. In 1999 MOC found that the south polar cap exhibits an array of bizarre layers, arcuate scarps, and “swiss cheese” holes and pits. How these formed was unknown. Once MOC began to re-image theseareas in 2001, however, the team discovered that the polar scarps had changed. They had retreated approximately 3 meters (about 3 yards) in less than one Mars year (a Mars year is 687 Earth days long). In some places, small buttes completely disappeared.
February 6th, 2002
Surveyor Updates Mars Atlas
In 1999, the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) aboard the MGS orbiter acquired a global stereo image dataset using its red-filter Wide Angle Camera. We have recently completed a 256 pixel/degree (about 230 meters/pixel) mosaic of these images using software developed at Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS).
November 21st, 2001
Mars Global Surveyor Snaps Record 100,000th Picture of Red Planet
A NASA spacecraft has taken its 100,000th picture of Mars, far eclipsing the photographic bounty returned by any other mission to the Red Planet. Scientists received the image from NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor on Nov. 5, nearly five years to the day after the robotic satellite was launched. No other spacecraft has taken as many pictures of Mars. NASA’s twin Viking orbiters have come the closest, returning a total of about 55,000 images of the planet between 1975 and 1980.
November 14th, 2001
Harris Corporation Software Processes Mars Imagery Harris Corporation
Harris Corporation, a world leader in advanced image processing solutions, announced today that it is providing software to help scientists and engineers gain a new perspective of Mars by creating the first high-resolution, image-based digital elevation models of the planet. The models, which are developed using images collected by the Mars Global Surveyor, will be used for detailed studies of surface features and to locate potential sites for future exploratory missions.