It’s not Kodak. It’s Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) on board NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft. THEMIS is a special multi-wavelength camera with five visual bands and ten infrared bands. THEMIS, designed mainly to map rock makeup and detect heat, yields information on the physical and thermal properties of the Martian surface.

After orbiting the planet since 2001, Odyssey has provided scientists enough to create a colorful mosaic "Were taking the daytime infrared and the nighttime infrared and the daytime visible data … and merging them all together to make well-calibrated and beautiful imagery," said Philip Christensen, Principal Investigator for the 2001 Mars Odyssey’s THEMIS instrument.

THEMIS, however, is more than a pretty painter.  The data gathered by the satellite can help scientists in picking good landing spots for future missions such as the Phoenix Scout set to fly next year.  Phoenix is scheduled to land in May 2008 in the planet's water-ice-rich northern polar region. So far the Martian snapshots have revealed a dark reveal a rocky world. It’s not sandy like Tatoine or anything like the Dust Bowl. "I don’t rule out that there are hot spots … nor near surface water,” Christensen said. "We’re just to the point where we can start to do that."

Christensen and his colleagues are working on some 2,000 THEMIS image pairs taken a year apart. Christensen said that work is underway to build up a global mosaic.