Mars Global Surveyor
Mars Orbiter Camera

Buttes South of Cerberus

MGS MOC Release No. MOC2-340, 24 April 2003

NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems

This Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) image shows rocky, dust-mantled buttes in a terrain similar to the Monument Valley of Utah/Arizona, located southwest of the Cerberus region. Boulders the size of large houses have tumbled down into the valleys between the buttes. The picture covers an area about 1.5 km (just under 1 mi) wide near 3.3°N, 212.4°W. Sunlight illuminates the scene from the left.

Malin Space Science Systems and the California Institute of Technology built the MOC using spare hardware from the Mars Observer mission. MSSS operates the camera from its facilities in San Diego, California. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Mars Surveyor Operations Project operates the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft with its industrial partner, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, from facilities in Pasadena, California and Denver, Colorado.

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