Images of Gale #14

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Caption:

Context image

During the month of April Mars will be in conjunction relative to the Earth. This means the Sun is in the line-of-sight between Earth and Mars, and communication between the two planets is almost impossible. For conjunction, the rovers and orbiting spacecraft at Mars continue to operate, but do not send the data to Earth. This recorded data will be sent to Earth when Mars moves away from the sun and the line-of-sight between Earth and Mars is reestablished. During conjunction the THEMIS image of the day will be a visual tour of Gale Crater, the location of the newest rover Curiosity.

We've moved slightly westward of yesterday's image and see one of the unusual features of Mt. Sharp. The highest elevation of the layered deposit occurs at the top of this image, but just south of the center of the image is a peak that does not appear to be layered and is eroding in a different manner than the rest of Mt. Sharp. This location and appearance of this rugged peak point to it being the remnent of a central peak formed at the time Gale Crater was created.

Orbit Number: 1132 Latitude: -5.29355 Longitude: 137.84 Instrument: VIS Captured: 2002-03-17 17:34

Background Info:

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.

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