Plot of the full uncorrected Pass 20 dataset. The blue line corresponds to the range of the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft to the Martian surface as measured by MOLA. The elliptical shape is due to the capture orbit. MOLA obtained data along the pass at spacecraft altitudes of less than 800 km. (The upper range limit is driven by the number of bits that the instrument has allocated to report range.) The red and green lines correspond to the range gates which bound the period of time that return pulses were expected at the MOLA receiver. The gating is used to exclude from the detector background noise at the laser wavelength. Profile data was collected between 80°N and 13°S. The pass went through western Elysium, 6° west of Pass 3. (Credit: MOLA Science Team)

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