Presented at the 30th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference

Houston, TX

March 16, 1999

In these profiles the south pole is at the left of the diagram and the north pole is at the right. Profile locations are shown by the blue lines superimposed on the Mars geological maps at the far right. Note the difference between the rough, heavily cratered southern highlands and the smooth northern lowlands, the latter of which have already been profiled by MOLA during MGS aerobraking hiatus and science phasing orbits. The second profile from the top shows detached plateaus at the transition between the southern highlands and northern lowlands. The fourth profile crosses the Valles Marineris canyon system, and the fifth crosses the easternmost part of the Hellas basin. The bottom profile crosses the Labyrinthus Noctis chasms that mark the center of the Tharsis rise. In these profiles the along-track laser shot spacing is ~300 m and the vertical resolution is ~37 cm. The widely scattered reflections above the ground are due to background noise at the laser wavelength and optical test source pulses which make up about 0.1% of the outgoing pulses. Clusters of reflections above the ground in the south polar region correspond to clouds. (Credit: MOLA Science Team)

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