THEMIS image of Earth/moon

Larger jpg (75 kB)
Hi-Res tif (2 MB)

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

PHOTO CAPTION                      PIA-00558
                                   Earth from Mars Odyssey
                                   April 23, 2001
                                        
The 2001 Mars Odyssey's thermal emission imaging system 
acquired these images of the Earth using its visible and 
infrared cameras as the spacecraft left the Earth.  The 
visible light image shows the thin crescent viewed from 
Odyssey's perspective.  The infrared image was acquired at 
exactly the same time, but shows the entire Earth using the 
infrared's "night-vision" capability.  In visible light, the 
instrument sees only reflected sunlight and therefore sees 
nothing on the night side of the planet.  In infrared light 
the camera observes the light emitted by all regions of the 
Earth.  The coldest ground temperatures seen correspond to the 
nighttime regions of Antarctica; the warmest temperatures 
occur in Australia.  The low temperature in Antarctica is 
minus 50 degrees Celsius (minus 58 degrees Fahrenheit); the 
high temperature at night in Australia 9 degrees Celsius (48.2 
degrees Fahrenheit).  These temperatures agree remarkably well 
with observed temperatures of minus 63 degrees Celsius at 
Vostok Station in Antarctica, and 10 degrees Celsius in 
Australia. The images were taken at a distance of 3,563,735 
kilometers (more than 2 million miles) on April 19, 2001 as 
the Odyssey spacecraft left Earth.

Mars Odyssey carries three scientific instruments designed to 
tell us what the Martian surface is made of and about its 
radiation environment: a thermal-emission imaging system, a 
gamma ray spectrometer and a Martian radiation environment 
experiment. Odyssey will arrive at Mars on October 24, when it 
will fire its main engine and be captured into Mars' orbit. 

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey 
mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. 
Principal investigators at Arizona State University in Tempe, 
the University of Arizona in Tuscon, and NASA's Johnson Space 
Center, Houston, Texas, will operate the science instruments. 
Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, Colo., is the prime 
contractor for the project, and developed and built the 
orbiter. Mission operations will be conducted jointly from 
Lockheed Martin and from JPL, a division of the California 
Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The thermal emission 
imaging system was built by Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote 
Sensing, Santa Barbara, Calif. and is operated by Arizona 
State University.  

                        #####

Image credit: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Arizona State 
University

JPL Image Use Policy