London Meeting, April 1998 - home page
Preliminary Mapping Results
from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter
Maria T. Zuber1 (zuber@mit.edu)
& David E. Smith2
1Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences,
54-318, Cambridge, MA 02139-4307, USA.
2NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Code 920, Greenbelt,
MD 20771, USA
Since arrival at Mars in Sept. 1997 the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA)
on the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft has obtained a number of topographic
profiles across the northern hemisphere of Mars. The altimeter has
a precision of a few tens of centimeters and able to provide topographic
profiles with approximately 10 meter radial accuracy. The early results
show the high northern latitudes to be low in elevation, very flat, and
increasing in both elevation and surface roughness towards the equator.
These data have provided a new estimate for the equatorial and north polar
radii of Mars and a significantly improved description of the topography
of the northern hemisphere.
Extra-terrestrial
Mapping Home Page
Comments to Dr. Randy Kirk
This page updated: 28 January, 2002, by Mark
Rosiek
This site is maintained and hosted by USGS, Astrogeology Research Program,
Flagstaff AZ