Happy Valentine's Day from Mars

February 14, 2000
Web posted at: 2:10 p.m. EST (1910 GMT)

(CNN) -- On Monday, just in time for St. Valentine's Day, NASA released this unique view of a bright, heart-shaped mesa in the south polar region captured by the Mars Global Surveyor on November 26, 1999.

The 255-meter-wide (279-yard-wide) feature is located in the Promethei Rupes region. Sunlight illuminates the scene from the lower left.

The presence of this mesa indicates that the darker, rough terrain that surrounds it was once covered by a layer of the bright material, according to NASA.

	MESSAGE BOARD
Destination Mars

The picture was taken in late southern spring in a region that spends each winter and most of each spring completely buried in bright frost.

The Mars Global Surveyor entered the martian orbit September 11, 1997, and began its mission of mapping the entire planet by taking high-resolution pictures of the martian surface.

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