PIA04130: Frozen Carbon Dioxide
NASA's Mars Global Surveyor shows Mars' south polar residual cap landscape, formed in frozen carbon dioxide.
 Target Name:  Mars
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) 
 Spacecraft:  Mars Global Surveyor Orbiter
 Instrument:  Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) 
 Product Size:  1024 x 2027 pixels (w x h) 
 Produced By:  Malin Space Science Systems 
 Producer ID:  MOC2-1170  
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA04130.tif (2.078 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA04130.jpg (430.3 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:

1 August 2005
This Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) image shows a south polar residual cap landscape, formed in frozen carbon dioxide. There is no place on Earth that one can go to visit a landscape covering thousands of square kilometers with frozen carbon dioxide, so mesas, pits, and other landforms of the martian south polar region are as alien as they are beautiful. The scarps of the south polar region are known from thousands of other MGS MOC images to retreat at a rate of about 3 meters (~3 yards) per martian year, indiating that slowly, over the course of the MGS mission, the amount of carbon dioxide in the martian atmosphere has probably been increasing.

Location near: 86.9°S, 25.5°W
Image width: width: ~3 km (~1.9 mi)
Illumination from: upper left
Season: Southern Spring

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems

Image Addition Date:
2005-08-01