LAYERED TERRAINS OF POLAR REGIONS OF MARS, 2001-03-21 (photo)

The National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA), a part of the Defense Department that usually makes maps and takes images of Earth for intelligence, military and humanitarian purposes, used pictures made by a NASA satellite orbitting Mars to track down what could be the doomed polar lander. NIMA gave NASA an unclassified report that says "NIMA believes it has located the Mars Polar Lander," the mapping agency said in a statement. The layered terrains of the polar regions of Mars are among the most exotic planetary landscapes in our Solar System. The layers exposed in the south polar residual cap, vividly shown in the top view, are thought to contain detailed records of Mars' climate history over the last 100 million years or so. The bottom picture shows complex erosional patterns that have developed on the south polar cap, perhaps by a combination of sublimation, wind erosion, and ground-collapse.