Thousands of New Images Show Mars in High Resolution

Thousands of newly released images from more than 1,500 telescopic observations by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show a wide range of gullies, dunes, craters, geological layering and other features on the Red Planet.

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on the orbiter recorded these images from the month of April through early August of this year. The camera team at the University of Arizona, Tucson, releases several featured images each week and periodically releases much larger sets of new images, such as the batch posted today.

The new images are available at hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/releases/sept_09.php .

Each full image from HiRISE covers a strip of Martian ground 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) wide, about two to four times that long, showing details as small as 1 meter, or yard, across.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been studying Mars with an advanced set of instruments since 2006. It has returned more data about the planet than all other past and current missions to Mars combined. For more information about the mission, visit: www.nasa.gov/mro .

Provided by JPL/NASA (news : web)