NASA has released a stunning image of Mars, as a part of the agency’s 20th-anniversary celebrations of the Mars Odyssey spacecraft, showing a sea of “blue” sand dunes on the red planet.
Along with sand dunes, the image also shows the wind-sculpted lines covering the planet’s frosty northern polar cap, where temperatures can reach as low as -150C.
According to NASA, the area covered in the image, first released on Thursday, is about 31 kilometers (19 miles) wide. However, “this sea of dunes, covers an area as large as Texas,” says NASA.
In a blog post, the space agency said that the image is a false-color image, representing the colors according to temperature. The further agency said that blue tint represents cooler temperatures, while yellow and orange represent warmer temperatures.
The image is a combination of images taken by the Mars Odyssey orbiter, during the period from December 2002 to November 2004, with the help of the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS). NASA’s Odyssey orbiter is the longest-working Mars spacecraft in history, launched back in 2001, which uses a thermal imager to detect evidence of water and ice on the red planet.