PIA11182: Morning Frost in Trench Dug by Phoenix, Sol 113
 Target Name:  Mars
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  Phoenix
 Spacecraft:  Phoenix Mars Lander
 Instrument:  Surface Stereo Imager (SSI)
 Product Size:  512 x 1024 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  University of Arizona
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA11182.tif (1.575 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA11182.jpg (113 kB)

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

This image from the Surface Stereo Imager on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander shows morning frost inside the "Snow White" trench dug by the lander, in addition to subsurface ice exposed by use of a rasp on the floor of the trench.

The camera took this image at about 9 a.m. local solar time during the 113th Martian day of the mission (Sept. 18, 2008). Bright material near and below the four-by-four set of rasp holes in the upper half of the image is water-ice exposed by rasping and scraping in the trench earlier the same morning. Other bright material especially around the edges of the trench, is frost. Earlier in the mission, when the sun stayed above the horizon all night, morning frost was not evident in the trench.

This image is presented in approximately true color.

The trench is 4 to 5 centimeters (about 2 inches) deep, about 23 centimeters (9 inches) wide.

Phoenix landed on a Martian arctic plain on May 25, 2008. The mission is led by the University of Arizona, Tucson, on behalf of NASA. Project management of the mission is led by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Spacecraft development was by Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver.

Photojournal Note: As planned, the Phoenix lander, which landed May 25, 2008 23:53 UTC, ended communications in November 2008, about six months after landing, when its solar panels ceased operating in the dark Martian winter.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/ Texas A&M University

Image Addition Date:
2008-09-20