THEMIS image of Earth

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PHOTO CAPTION                  PIA-00559
                               Earth & Moon from Mars Odyssey
                               April 23, 2001
                                        
2001 Mars Odyssey's thermal emission imaging system took this 
portrait of the Earth and its companion Moon, using the 
infrared camera, one of two cameras in the instrument.  It was 
taken at distance of 3,563,735 kilometers  (more than 2 
million miles) on April 19, 2001 as the 2001 Mars Odyssey 
spacecraft left the Earth.  From this distance and perspective 
the camera was able to acquire an image that directly shows 
the true distance from the Earth to the Moon.  The Earth's 
diameter is about 12,750 kilometers, and the distance from the 
Earth to the Moon is about 385,000 kilometers, corresponding 
to 30 Earth diameters.  The dark region seen on Earth in the 
infrared temperature image is the cold south pole, with a 
temperature of minus 50 degrees Celsius (minus 58 degrees 
Fahrenheit).  The small bright region above it is warm 
Australia.  This image was acquired using the 9.1 micron 
infrared filter, one of nine filters that the instrument will 
use to map the mineral composition and temperature of the 
Martian surface.  From this great distance, each picture 
element (pixel) in the image corresponds to a region 900 by 
900 kilometers (about 560 by 560 miles).  Once Odyssey reaches 
Mars orbit each infrared pixel will cover a region only 100 by 
100 meters on the surface (about 330 by 330 feet), about the 
size of a major league baseball field.

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.  

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

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