Athabasca Valles

This VIS image shows part of Athabasca Valles. Several streamlined islands are visible, with 'tails' pointing downstream. Arising from Cerberus Fossae, the formation mode of this channel is still being debated. While the channel features are similar to water flow, other features are similar to lava flows, and yet other features have an appearance of slabs of material that floated on an underlying fluid. This is just one of the complex channel formations in the Elysium Planitia region.

Orbit Number: 81766 Latitude: 8.8671 Longitude: 155.76 Instrument: VIS Captured: 2020-05-20 22:21

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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.