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South Polar Surface

Aug. 23, 2011
With southern summer drawing to a close, the surface of the polar ice cap will begin to frost over on Mars as seen by NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft.
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With southern summer drawing to a close, the surface of the polar ice cap will begin to frost over. We won't see the details of the surface textures again until next southern summer -- in two Earth years.

Orbit Number: 42569 Latitude: -85.5211 Longitude: 286.422 Instrument: VIS Captured: 2011-07-20 09:53

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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