This sinuous channel begins at the edge of Cerulli Crater in northern Arabia and snakes its way across 1000 km of cratered highlands before reaching Deuteronilus Mensae at the boundary of the northern lowlands. The fluid that carved the channel, either lava or water, flowed from the bottom of this scene to the top. The quasi-streamlined features on the channel floor may have nothing to do with flow and instead may be due to a permafrost creep process.

Note: this THEMIS visual image has not been radiometrically nor geometrically calibrated for this preliminary release. An empirical correction has been performed to remove instrumental effects. A linear shift has been applied in the cross-track and down-track direction to approximate spacecraft and planetary motion. Fully calibrated and geometrically projected images will be released through the Planetary Data System in accordance with Project policies at a later time.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) was developed by Arizona State University, Tempe, in collaboration with Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing. The THEMIS investigation is led by Dr. Philip Christensen at Arizona State University. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, is the prime contractor for the Odyssey project, and developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and from JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Image information: VIS instrument. Latitude 31.3, Longitude 19.1 East (340.9 West). 19 meter/pixel resolution.