Mars Odyssey orbiter imaged the Arsia Mons volcano with Martian atmosphere in greenish haze, 5-2-25 2 (credit: JPL/Caltech/ASU)
NASA's Odyssey spacecraft captured a first-of-its-kind view of a massive volcano on Mars. Arsia Mons dwarfs Earth’s tallest volcanoes. The panoramic image from the orbiter shows one of the Martian volcano poking through a greenish atmospheric layer of clouds at dawn.
According to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) that manages the Odyssey mission, Arsia Mons and other volcanoes form a region on the Red Planet known as Tharsis Montes, or Tharsis Mountains, often surrounded by early morning water ice clouds. This panorama marks the first time one of the volcanoes has been imaged on the Martian horizon.
Launched in 2001, the Mars Odyssey is the longest-running JPL mission orbiting another planet. The new horizon-viewing perspective represents a new science objective the orbiter began 2023, when it photographed four high altitude images of the Martian horizon. To acquire that oblique view, the spacecraft rotates 90 degrees so that its camera, built to study the Martian surface focused straight downwards, to can capture the horizon. From that angle, JPL scientists can observe dust and ice cloud layers and to follow changes over the course of the Martian seasons.
Mars horizon captured by the Odyssey THEMIS camera orbiting ~250 miles above the Martian surface, 11-28-23 (credit: JPL/Caltech/ASU)
JPL produced a video to explain the science goals of the Mars Odyssey mission and several of the discoveries that the orbiter has made so far. WHB