Contact: Mary Hardin

New images from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft show shadows cast on Mars' surface by the Martian moon Phobos.

Global Surveyor's wide-angle cameras, designed to monitor changes in Martian weather and surface conditions, are also proving to be a good way to spot the frequent solar eclipses that occur on Mars when Phobos passes between the red planet and the Sun. Phobos is a tiny, potato-shaped moon that is only about 13- by-11-by-9 kilometers (8-by-7-by-6 miles) in size.

The images are available at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov or http://www.msss.com.

Mars Global Surveyor is the first mission in a long-term program of Mars exploration known as the Mars Surveyor Program that is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA.