Martian Albedo from TES
New Views of Mars from the Thermal Emission Spectrometer Instrument
Martian Albedo
click on image for larger version (270k)
During the first 1500 orbits (March through August, 1999) of the Mars
Global Surveyor (MGS) mapping mission the Thermal Emission Spectrometer
(TES) instrument has been measuring the surface brightness (albedo) of
Mars. In this figure of all of the TES data acquired during that
period have been combined to produce a detailed image of the Martian
surface. The region shown includes the equatorial region of Mars where
both the Pathfinder and Viking 1 spacecraft landed. The dark regions
are areas swept free of dust by the Martian winds, whereas the brighter
regions are areas of dust accumulation. These bright and dark makings
are known to change over time as the Martian winds move dust and sand
across the surface. The TES measurements are providing a means of
tracking these changes in very precise manner. Note that the
Pathfinder landing site is located near the boundary between bright and
dark regions and that the landing site is located in a region of modest
dust accumulation.
The TES instrument was built by Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing
and is operated at Arizona State University as part of NASAs Mars
Global Surveyor mission. The MGS mission is managed by the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA and operated in conjunction with
Lockheed Martin Astronautics in Denver, CO.
Contact: Phil Christensen, Arizona State University; (480) 965-1790
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