 Hubble's Picture of Mars
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Aug. 27, 2003 — The Hubble Space Telescope's newest picture of Mars shows summer on the Red Planet just as it makes its closest pass by Earth in 60,000 years.
The image, taken on Tuesday 11 hours before the closest approach, shows in fine detail the scarred surface of Mars, including the 270-mile- (450-km-) diameter Huygens crater near the center of the image, according to a NASA press release.
The dark, horizontal lane to the left in the photo left, called Sinus Meridani, is where one of NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers, named "Opportunity," will land in January 2004.
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It's a relatively warm summer on Mars, the picture reveals in the lack of water-ice clouds at mid-latitude and the receding southern polar cap. Ice on the rugged topography shows in the photo as ragged and scalloped. At the top of the disk where it is winter, a frigid hood of clouds covers the northern polar cap and surrounding region.
In the relatively balmy Southern Hemisphere, daytime highs are just above freezing in the Hellas impact basin, the circular feature near the center of the image. Hellas is nearly 5 miles deep (8 km) and like Death Valley, except that Mars is much drier than even Death Valley. Its diameter of 1,100 miles (1,760 km), was formed when an asteroid slammed into Mars billions of years ago.
Many summer dust storms originate in this basin, though it is remarkably clear of dust in this Hubble image.
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