This is CBS Eye on the World.

I'm John Batser.

Bob Zimmerman is here.

He keeps the website behind the black.

And I'm looking at a smudge picture of something that might be described as a planet.

But Bob tells me this is a thermal image from Europa Clipper of Mars.

What am I looking at, Bob?

That's a good question. So, Europa Clipper is on. What am I looking at, Bob? That's a good question. So,

Europa Clipper is on its way to Jupiter, to orbit Jupiter while it focuses on studying the

moon of Jupiter, Europa. But it's going to take a long time to get there. In March, March

first it did a fly-by of Mars to give it a slingshot to get it on its way. It still

has to fly by Earth one more time in 26, and that'll put it on its path to get to Jupiter

in 2030. But in flying past Mars on April 1st, the scientists used that flyby to test the science instruments on the spacecraft.

One of the instruments on the spacecraft they tested is a thermal imager.

Basically what this is looking at is infrared, the heat signature of what it looks at.

And this is important for Europa because they want to find out if there's oceans underneath

the surface.

And you do that with a lot of that can be done because thermal data looks below the surface

as well as on the surface.

So while they went by Mars, they took a picture of Mars, the surface of Mars.

And as I say on the website, and they say in the connection that the obvious area the North Pole, where it's cold, the darkest cold, and there's bright spots here.

They didn't identify what some of the features in this blurry images are.

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