The striking landscape of Hydraotes Chaos on Mars
The striking landscape of Hydraotes Chaos on Mars
The first HRSC image, which was unveiled to the public in January 2004, showed the Hydraotes Chaos region - a labyrinth of mesas created by the eroding effect of masses of water draining away and ground collapsing to form great voids. Since then, the Mars Express probe has orbited Mars about 19,000 times at different altitudes. As a result, global coverage has seen constant improvement, with image resolutions of down to 12 metres per pixel. The image here shows a view recently acquired by HRSC from the equator looking north over the striking landscape of Hydraotes Chaos with its more than 2000-metre-high table-mountain outliers in the foreground. The outflow channels of Simud Valles (left) and Tiu Valles (right), which are up to 80 kilometres wide and more than 1000 kilometres long, extend as far as the horizon.
