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Today's VIS image shows a small portion of the immense lava flows that originated from Arsia Mons. Arsia Mons is the southernmost of the three large aligned volcanoes in the Tharsis region. Arsia Mons' last eruption was 10s of million years ago. The different surface textures are created by differences in the lava viscosity and cooling rates. The lobate margins of each flow can be traced back to the start of each flow — or to the point where they are covered by younger flows. Flows in Daedalia Planum can be as long as 180 km (111 miles). For comparison the longest Hawaiian lava flow is only 51 km (~31 miles) long. The total area of Daedalia Planum is 2.9 million square km — more than four times the size of Texas.

Orbit Number: 84353 Latitude: -22.909 Longitude: 236.007 Instrument: VIS Captured: 2020-12-19 21:40

Please see the THEMIS Data Citation Note for details on crediting THEMIS images.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, 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.