Look Out Below! Rough Terrain In the Warrego Valles Region

After several weeks of hiatus owing to problems with Mars Global Surveyor's High Gain Antenna (e.g., see JPL Release (April 16, 1999) the Mars Orbiter Camera resumed operations during the final days of April 1999. Shown here is one of the first images returned after MOC began taking pictures again.

Warrego Valles is a system of discontinuous valleys located in the martian southern hemisphere south of Valles Marineris between Aonia Terra and Icaria Planum. This picture shows one of the small valleys in this system. The planet's surface both inside and outside the valley appears to be extremely rough. A person would find this terrain challenging to walk around in. The picture is illuminated from the upper left and covers an area 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) across.

Malin Space Science Systems and the California Institute of Technology built the MOC using spare hardware from the Mars Observer mission. MSSS operates the camera from its facilities in San Diego, CA. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Mars Surveyor Operations Project operates the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft with its industrial partner, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, from facilities in Pasadena, CA and Denver, CO.