ESA’s Mars Express takes us on a journey across the southern highlands of Mars to Flaugergues Crater.
The video begins by tracking along a swathe of ground enclosed by two steeply sloping and roughly parallel cliffs – or escarpments – named Scylla Scopulus and Charybdis Scopulus (to the left and right, respectively). This ’path’ of ground is called a graben, created as tectonic plates pulled apart. It measures about 75 km wide by 1 km deep.
The prominent, 150-km-wide Bakhuysen Crater can be seen to the left.
The camera continues travelling northwards, approaching Flaugergues Crater in the distance. It moves along the crater’s eastern side before circling around to the left and ending at its western rim.
Flaugergues Crater is a roughly 240-km-wide basin found in Mars’s southern highlands, where most of the rough terrain is densely covered in craters. Half of the crater floor is also rugged, with parts rising up to elevations of around 1 km. We see a valley crossing this rocky patch, which was likely shaped by flows of wind and lava.
Enjoy the flight, and be sure to view the associated map of the area, which shows the route taken by the camera and highlights the key features seen throughout the journey. These features are also indicated in the voiceover.
Want to continue your airborne adventures on the Red Planet? Other Mars Express flights across the martian surface can take you to Nili Fossae, Ares Vallis, Xanthe Terra, Noctis Labyrinthus, and Jezero Crater.
How the video was made
This video is not representative of how Mars Express flies over the surface of Mars.
It was created using data from the Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera Mars Chart (HMC20W), an image mosaic made from single orbit observations of the mission’s High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). The mosaic image, centred at 20°S/17°E, is combined with topography information from the digital terrain model to generate a three-dimensional landscape.
For every second of the video, 50 separate frames are rendered following a pre-defined camera path. The vertical exaggeration used for the animation is three-fold. Atmospheric effects, like clouds and haze, have been added to conceal the limits of the terrain model. The haze starts building up at a distance of 250 km.
The HRSC camera on Mars Express is operated by the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The systematic processing of the camera data took place at the DLR Institute for Planetary Research in Berlin-Adlershof. The working group of Planetary Science and Remote Sensing at FU Berlin used the data to create the film.
Access the related broadcast quality footage.