Planet Mars: Of Things Light and Dark | NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

Planet Mars: Of Things Light and Dark | NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

Here in Eos Chasma, hematite has been detected. Hematite is one of the most abundant minerals in the rocks and soils on the surface of Mars. Although our image from the red-green-blue enhanced color swath appears dark blue, an abundance of hematite in Martian rocks and surface materials gives the landscape a reddish brown color and is why the planet appears red in the night sky.

Eos Chasma is located in the southern part of the massive Valles Marineris canyon system.

This is a non-narrated clip with ambient sound. The image is less than 1 km (under a mile) across and the spacecraft altitude was 264 km (164 mi). 

This image was captured by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) using the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) instrument. 

Malin Space Science Systems built the Mars Color Imager (MARCI), Context Camera (CTX) systems for MRO.

The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colorado. 

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona

Duration: 3 minutes, 32 seconds

Release Date: Dec. 12, 2022

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