Mars Ex­press - In­sight in­to the his­to­ry of the Mar­tian cli­mate

Flight over Jeze­ro Crater – land­ing site of the Mars 2020 mis­sion

A sim­u­lat­ed flight over Jeze­ro Crater on Mars. Home to a stand­ing body of wa­ter more than 3.5 bil­lion years ago, this crater is where NASA’s Mars 2020 mis­sion Per­se­ver­ance rover will land to search for signs of past mi­cro­bial life. The video is based on da­ta from the High Res­o­lu­tion Stereo Cam­era (HRSC) on board ESA's Mars Ex­press space­craft, which has been in or­bit around Mars since 2003. HRSC is op­er­at­ed by the Ger­man Aerospace Cen­ter (DLR).

Video: Mars - our red neigh­bour

In ad­di­tion to gi­ant vol­ca­noes and deep rift val­leys, Mars has even more spec­tac­u­lar land­scapes. Ex­pe­ri­ence the var­i­ous fea­tures of this plan­et in fas­ci­nat­ing im­ages ac­quired with DLR's High Res­o­lu­tion Stereo Cam­era on board the Mars Ex­press space­craft.

Video: Vir­tu­al flight around Gale Crater

Us­ing im­ages ac­quired by the High Res­o­lu­tion Cam­era (HRSC) on board ESA's Mars Ex­press space­craft, DLR re­searchers have cre­at­ed a 3D vir­tu­al flight over the land­ing site of the Mars Sci­ence Lab­o­ra­to­ry in the 150-kilo­me­tre-sized Gale Crater. The land­ing sce­nario is al­so vis­i­ble at the end.

Video – flight over Neukum Crater on Mars

This video shows a flight over the 102-kilo­me­tre wide Neukum Crater in the south­ern high­lands of Mars. It is based on da­ta ac­quired by the High Res­o­lu­tion Stereo Cam­era (HRSC), op­er­at­ed by the Ger­man Aerospace Cen­ter (Deutsches Zen­trum für Luft- und Raum­fahrt; DLR) on board the ESA Mars Ex­press space­craft, which has been or­bit­ing Mars since 2003. The im­pact crater was named af­ter the Ger­man plan­e­tary sci­en­tist Ger­hard Neukum (1944-2014), who led the de­vel­op­ment of the HRSC. The crater is lo­cat­ed in the Noachis Ter­ra re­gion in the dense­ly cratered Mar­tian south­ern high­lands, rough­ly 800 kilo­me­tres from the west­ern rim of the large im­pact crater Hel­las Plani­tia. Neukum Crater has a di­verse ge­o­log­i­cal his­to­ry, as ev­i­denced by the dif­fer­ent ge­o­mor­pho­log­i­cal struc­tures on the crater rim and floor.

Video: 15 Years of Imag­ing the Red Plan­et

On 10 Jan­uary 2004, the first of thou­sands of de­tailed im­ages of the Mar­tian sur­face was cap­tured by the High Res­o­lu­tion Stereo Cam­era (HRSC), which is a Ger­man re­search in­stru­ment on board the Eu­ro­pean Space Agen­cy’s Mars Ex­press space­craft, which has been in or­bit around Mars since De­cem­ber 2003. Dur­ing the last 15 years, HRSC has ac­quired im­age da­ta dur­ing more than 5000 or­bits, re­sult­ing in a steadi­ly in­creas­ing set of spec­tac­u­lar views of the Mar­tian sur­face, im­age and dig­i­tal ter­rain mod­el mo­saics, and movie re­leas­es. HRSC cov­er­age of the Mar­tian sur­face with high res­o­lu­tion (bet­ter than 20 me­ter per pix­el) has reached 80 per­cent.

An­i­ma­tion: Fly­ing over Mars' north po­lar cap

The video shows the per­ma­nent ice cap at the Mar­tian North Pole and the up to 100-kilo­me­tre wide and 500-kilo­me­tre long val­ley Chas­ma Bo­re­ale. The north po­lar cap has a di­am­e­ter of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1100 kilo­me­tres and stands up to three kilo­me­tres above the sur­round­ing land­scape. It is al­so known as the sum­mer ice cap and main­ly con­sists of wa­ter ice. The HRSC mo­sa­ic on which this video was based was com­piled from 32 in­di­vid­u­al im­age strips (1154, 1177, 1219, 1291, 1394, 1745, 3663, 3681, 3685, 3695, 5483, 5775, 5784, 5796, 5808, 5810, 5818, 5824, 5827, 5838, 5853, 5864, 5867, 5900, 5904, 5963, 6007, 6229, 8042, 8080, 8153, 8160). The im­age po­si­tion is lo­cat­ed be­tween 0 to 360 de­grees east and around 78 to 90 de­grees north. The colour mo­sa­ic was de­rived from the nadir chan­nel per­pen­dic­u­lar to the sur­face of Mars and the HRSC colour chan­nels. The mo­sa­ic im­age was com­bined with to­po­graph­ic in­for­ma­tion from the Mars Or­biter Laser Al­time­ter (MO­LA) ex­per­i­ment on board the NASA Mars Glob­al Sur­vey­or (MGS) space­craft, re­sult­ing in a three-di­men­sion­al land­scape. The glob­al Mars view is based on the Viking MDIM 2.1 colour mo­sa­ic. Staff from the Plan­e­tary Sci­ences and Re­mote Sens­ing Di­vi­sion at Freie Uni­ver­sität Berlin used the im­age da­ta to pro­duce this an­i­mat­ed over­flight of the north po­lar cap. The sys­tem­at­ic pro­cess­ing of the da­ta was un­der­tak­en at the DLR In­sti­tute of Plan­e­tary Re­search in Berlin-Adler­shof.

Video: Flight over Mawrth Val­lis

The video starts at the mouth of Mawrth Val­lis and ex­tends in­to the vast plain of Chryse Plani­tia. From there, it con­tin­ues along the wind­ing course of the val­ley to the source re­gion in the four bil­lion year old, heav­i­ly cratered Ara­bia Ter­ra high­lands to the north of the Mar­tian equa­tor. The High Res­o­lu­tion Stereo Cam­era (HRSC) op­er­at­ed by the Ger­man Aerospace Cen­ter (Deutsches Zen­trum für Luft- und Raum­fahrt; DLR) on board ESA's Mars Ex­press space­craft has im­aged the val­ley in high res­o­lu­tion. Sci­en­tists from the Freie Uni­ver­sität Berlin have cre­at­ed a sim­u­lat­ed over­flight video along the course of the val­ley from the dig­i­tal ter­rain mod­el cal­cu­lat­ed at the DLR In­sti­tute of Plan­e­tary Re­search.

Video: Flight over Bec­quer­el Crater

The video se­quence shown here is based on HRSC im­age da­ta tak­en from four over­flights above Bec­quer­el Crater, put to­geth­er to form a mo­sa­ic (or­bits 3253_1, 5368, 5350 and 5332). The av­er­age im­age res­o­lu­tion is ap­prox­i­mate­ly 17 me­tres per pix­el. Plan­e­tary sci­en­tists at Freie Uni­ver­sität Berlin in­volved in the Mars Ex­press mis­sion used the HRSC im­age da­ta to pro­duce the an­i­ma­tion. Bec­quer­el Crater is lo­cat­ed in the Ara­bia Ter­ra re­gion, the tran­si­tion­al zone from the South­ern High­lands of Mars to its North­ern Low­lands, and has a di­am­e­ter of 167 kilo­me­tres. Like many oth­er craters in this re­gion, the in­te­ri­or of Bec­quer­el shows in­ter­est­ing sed­i­men­ta­tion phe­nom­e­na.

Video: Flight over Hy­draotes Chaos on Mars

The da­ta used to gen­er­ate the sim­u­lat­ed over­flight were ac­quired with the High Res­o­lu­tion Stereo Cam­era (HRSC), op­er­at­ed by the Ger­man Aerospace Cen­ter (Deutsches Zen­trum für Luft- und Raum­fahrt; DLR) on board ESA's Mars Ex­press space­craft. Once again, im­age strips from or­bit 18 - sym­bol­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant for the HRSC sci­en­tists - were edit­ed and used for the an­i­ma­tions and im­ages shown here. Over 10 years ago, in Jan­uary 2004, Mars Ex­press flew over Hy­draotes Chaos dur­ing or­bit 18. This was the third time that the HRSC cam­era had been switched on, and the im­ages in the im­age strips, which were over 1000 kilo­me­tres long, were so spec­tac­u­lar that they were drawn on for pub­li­ca­tion of the first im­ages from the suc­cess­ful ESA mis­sion.

Video: Vir­tu­al flight over the mouth of the Ka­sei Valles re­gion

This im­pres­sive video takes us on a vir­tu­al flight over the mouth of the Ka­sei Valles re­gion. Ear­li­er in the plan­et's his­to­ry, enor­mous amounts of wa­ter flowed through the Mar­tian high­lands, sculpt­ing these val­leys and leav­ing its trace in the land­scape.