ESA Mars Express: Flying over Becquerel Crater - Video

This latest release from the camera on ESA’s Mars Express is a simulated flight over the Becquerel crater, showing large-scale deposits of sedimentary material.

Becquerel crater is 167 km in diameter and lies in the Arabia Terra region on Mars, on the boundary between the southern highlands and northern lowlands.

This movie shows the location of Becquerel crater on Mars and then provides a flyover of a mound of layered, sulphate-bearing deposits on the crater floor, thought to have formed under the influence of water.

The darker material surrounding the mound is wind-blown dust from a source to the north, and provides evidence for effects of wind in eroding the sedimentary deposits.

The movie was made from a mosaic of four individual images acquired by the High Resolution Stereo Camera on ESA’s Mars Express during orbits 3253/1, 5332, 5350 and 5368.

The image is centred at about 22ºN / 352ºE. The average ground resolution is about 17 m per pixel.

Arabia Terra in the northern highlands of Mars

Bright and dark slope streaks on the surface of Arabia Terra in the northern highlands of Mars.

The heavily cratered and eroded surface identifies it as one of Mars's oldest features.

Streaks on some Martian slopes have been associated with underground water that thaws and flows in the Martian summer and contracts and freezes in the winter.

The streaks here formed another way—likely through dust deposited and cleared away by the planet's ever-shifting winds.

ESA ENVISAT Image: Arid Arabia

This Envisat image, acquired on 28 October 2011, shows central Saudi Arabia on the arid Arabian Peninsula. 

The area pictured is on the central plateau, Nejd, which slopes downwards from west to east. 

The dark circle near the centre of the image is the capital city of Riyadh, the nation’s legislative, financial administrative, diplomatic and commercial hub.

Credits: ESA

NASA Mars Orbiter: Inverted crater in Arabia Terra

An inverted crater in the Arabia Terra region of Mars that is among the images taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

NASA said the orbiter has sent back 100 terabits of information since 2006. That's equal to about 3 million songs in MP3 format

Picture: NASA