A high content of hydrogen in Mars' southern polar region is apparent in this global map of high-energy neutrons measured by the high-energy neutron detector on NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft.

The neutrons were measured by the medium detector (in counts per second) during the first week of mapping, in February 2002. Space background neutrons have been subtracted. The pixels are 10 degrees by 10 degrees.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The high-energy neutron detector was supplied by the Russian Aviation and Space Agency and is one of the instruments in the gamma ray spectrometer instrument suite, which was supplied by the University of Arizona, Tucson. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, is the prime contractor for the project, and developed and built the orbiter. See http://grs.lpl.arizona.edu for more information. Odyssey mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and from JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.