Floating orbiting over Mars, NASA’s Odyssey Orbiter, Odyssey, captured a panorama of the largest volcanoes on the red planet, Aria Mons, looking on a sea of clouds. The picturesque moment offers an exceptionally rare view of a Martian volcano, showing the earth’s shape at an angle in an space that captures the horizon of the planet.
“We chose ARIA MONS in the hope that we see the summit above the morning clouds. And it did not disappoint,” said Jonathon Hill, the leadership of Odyssey’s camera operations and a mission planner at the Arizona University Space Flight installation, called the system of thermal emissions or themes, said in a statement. Themes can see Mars in both visible and infrared light.
Launched in 2001, Odyssey has been around Mars for more than two decades, studying the Martian surface. But in 2023, the Orbiter began to take impressive panoramic views of the Martian horizon. Because the Themis cannot turn to obtain these breathtaking views, the orbit climbs by their side, turning 90 degrees. In this way, he captured the “limb” of Mars, the edge of the horizon of the planet. That is The fourth observation of the extremities of Themis since 2023.
Odyssey captured the image on May 2, just before dawn. In him, ARIA MONS It is 20 kilometers (20 kilometers) high and measures 450 km in diameter. For comparison, the highest volcano on Earth, Mauna Loa, is 9 km (9 km) on the sea and measures 121 km in diameter.
ARIA MONS is also one of the most cloudy volcanoes of seas and the southernmost of the three Tharsis volcanoes that make up Tarrsis Montes or Tharsis Mountains. These mountains are often surrounded by clouds of water ice, especially in the early morning. The clouds are formed when the air expands as it blows the sides of the mountain and cools quickly.
This vision also allows scientists to study the climate and Martian phenomena such as the dust clouds and how they change throughout the seasons. Odyssey could capture -some more of these panoramas before his eventual retirement, probably in the By the end of this year.
