Nightwatch On Mars

Posted by tourdemars to Mars Odyssey at May 15, 2002 12:00 PM

There is a dark side to Mars. Experts studying the reddish globe in the infrared see a wonderland of nighttime surprise. Through the art of sunless science, researchers are trying to discern whether Mars is a percolating planet of still huffing volcanoes and hot shot geysers. Since nudging itself into a science orbit around the planet in February, NASA's Mars Odyssey has been busily snapping images of martian terrain in both infrared and visible light. That job belongs to the probe's Thermal Emission Imaging System - better known in spectral splendor shorthand as THEMIS. "It's like wearing night vision goggles. With the nighttime infrared…it's a whole new planet," said James Rice, senior ASU Mars scientist on Odyssey's THEMIS team. "It's the star of the show. I think that probably the major discoveries will come out of the infrared. I had no clue we'd be seeing things like we're seeing," he said.