EXPLORE


JOINRENEWJOIN

Visions of Mars Landing May 25.
  

Planetary News: 2001 Mars Odyssey (2005)

Mars Odyssey: Arizona State University Presents Images "Live" from Mars

18 October 2005

Ganges Chasma on Mars
Click to enlarge >
Ganges Chasma on Mars
Overlapping landslides lie exposed in the bottom of Mars' Ganges Chasma in a false-color view taken by the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) onboard Mars Odyssey. Colors indicate nighttime temperatures, with redder colors signifying warmer and rockier terrain. This image also shows outcrops of olivine basalt in the floor of Ganges as thin red "stripes" paralleling the walls. Olivine is a volcanic mineral that decomposes easily in water, and its presence here suggests that Ganges, an old feature, has been dry for much of Mars' history. Credit: NASA / JPL / Arizona State University

A new website at Arizona State University is providing scientists -- and the public -- with "live" views of Mars.

A scrolling panel that runs continually at the site shows visual and infrared images of Mars as they are received from the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) instrument onboard Mars Odyssey.

"These images appear on the site at the same time the THEMIS science team sees them," said Phil Christensen, Regents Professor of Geological Sciences at ASU and the principal investigator for the THEMIS instrument. "No other orbiter mission is providing anything like this global view of Mars."

THEMIS is a specialized camera on the Mars Odyssey orbiter spacecraft, which was launched in 2001. The device uses five visual and 10 infrared filters to study the mineralogy of Mars, as well as the thermal and physical properties of the Martian surface. At visual wavelengths, THEMIS has a resolution of 59 feet (18 meters) per pixel, while at infrared wavelengths its resolution is 328 feet (100 meters) per pixel. The new THEMIS website, which can be found at http://themis.asu.edu, includes:

* A "Feature of the Week" that presents a large, detailed, and often-colorful THEMIS image mosaic showing one particular part of Mars. An interactive image viewer lets users scroll and zoom within the image over the Internet, as accompanying text describes key features of interest in the image.

More On 2001 Mars Odyssey


Do More


* An interactive Mars map showing all released THEMIS images, allowing everyone -- from school children to scientific researchers -- access to all 82,000 released THEMIS images. Users can pan and zoom across Mars, selecting images and downloading them in a variety of formats at full resolution.

* A gallery of Mars images arranged by topic, which includes 800 annotated images of the Red Planet. Anyone wishing to explore Martian dunes, polar caps, landslides, craters and more can find them with a mouse click or two. There's even a "best of" THEMIS page with highlights from the image archive.

* A list of the top scientific discoveries made with the instrument.

Visitors to the new THEMIS Web site will also find background information on the instrument and the Mars Odyssey mission.

"THEMIS is used by Mars scientists the world over," Christensen added. "That's why we added a discoveries page on the site to spotlight the more recent scientific findings made using THEMIS imagery."

Among its many discoveries and accomplishments, THEMIS scouted the landing site for the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity in Meridiani Planum, identified Earth-like igneous rocks on the Red Planet, and spotted volcanic minerals that suggest Mars has been cold and dry for most of its 4.5-billion-year history.