Mars in the New Year

Many will long remember where they were and what they were doing when the calendar rolled over to the year 2000. On Mars , of course, that date was nothing special and the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft continued with business as usual - systematically recording images of the Red Planet from orbit . In fact, this striking high-resolution picture was taken less than 7 hours after the new year began for planet Earth's “Universal Time” zone. The area seen is about 3 kilometers across at a maximum resolution of 4.5 meters per pixel. It shows a wonderful variety of surface features and textures in the Martian northern hemisphere region Nilosyrtis Mensae .