There is a large area of the planet, a roughly rectangular region between Lat 50 and 30 S and Lon 80 and 60 E in Hellas Planitia where the data is washed out and colorless, almost white. Topography is barely visible. It apears that the data itself is bad, since the N-S orbital paths of the satellite sensors are clearly visible.

I’ve done quite a bit of cruising of the surface on Google Mars and I’ve never noticed this before. It appears that this is new, poorly processed data which has been overlain on the existing imagery, or perhaps it is recent data imaged during a dust storm and which was slapped on top of older imagery. Surface detail is quite badly obscured.

Can anyone shed some light on this?