A view of the red planet almost completely enveloped in dust storms is one of 15,251 newly released images from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor. These images bring the total number of snapshots taken by the spacecraft to more than 93,000.
The latest images to be added to the online archive are from the first phase of the Mars Global Surveyor extended mission, which began February 1, 2001. Regions that were poorly covered during the primary mapping mission due to regional dust storms have now been captured.
The latest images include sand dunes on Mars' north polar cap and a 3-D image of layered rock that resembles the topography of Arizona and Utah.
Also included are two dramatic global views of Mars. The first view shows the modest yet impressive beginnings of a regional dust storm, while the other shows the planet's geographical features almost completely obscured by multiple dust storms.
The images are available at: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs and
and http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/ .
Mars Global Surveyor is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The camera system is operated by Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, Calif.