Moving further right again uncovers the Solar System’s largest canyon, Valles Marineris. A chain of three volcanoes making up the Tharsis Montes lies just below and to the right. Towards the top left stands Olympus Mons, the tallest volcano in the Solar System at over 21 km high. Upon closer inspection, many well-known geological features are revealed. The subtle variation in colour tones are due partly to changes in dust content in the atmosphere, but mostly due to the change in solar elevation as the spacecraft moves around the planet, experiencing different illumination conditions. These effects are more prevalent in the region shown in the top right of the map, as reflected by the greater number of ‘missing’ pieces there. Images that were particularly affected by dust or atmospheric effects have not been included in the mosaic. The map provides a record of all locations observed by the camera simultaneously in red, green, blue and nadir channels. The map is equatorially aligned, meaning that regions at the poles appear distorted. This portal showcases data collected by NASA at various landing sites and features an easy-to-use browsing tool that provides layering and viewing of high resolution data.
The mosaic comprises 2702 individual swaths of the martian surface, up to and including the spacecraft’s 10 821st orbit of the planet, which it completed on 30 June 2012.Īt this time, 87.8% of the surface had been mapped at any resolution, with 61.5% mapped at a resolution of 20 m per pixel or better. Mars Trek Trek is a NASA web-based portal for exploration of Mars.
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