Tag Archives: HRSC

HRSC: Craters within the Hellas basin

Posted on August 18, 2014 by rburnham

Scarring the southern highlands of Mars is one of the Solar System’s largest impact basins: Hellas, with a diameter of 2300 km and a depth of over 7 km. Hellas is thought to have formed between 3.8 and 4.1 billion … Continue reading →

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HRSC: Perspective view of Hellespontus Montes

Posted on July 10, 2014 by rburnham

Perspective view of Hellespontus Montes, a rocky ridge on the western rim of the vast Hellas basin in the southern hemisphere of Mars. The foreground shows a close-up of a crater with a particularly interesting feature: wrinkles that form a … Continue reading →

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Gale Crater’s icy hydrological cycle

Posted on June 25, 2014 by rburnham

Gale Crater was once home to glaciers and other features of an icy hydrological system, says a team of scientists led by Alberto Fairén (Centro de Astrobiología in Spain and Cornell University). They base their work on images captured with the … Continue reading →

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HRSC: Dune field in Rabe Crater

Posted on May 15, 2014 by rburnham

Rabe Crater is a 108 km-wide impact crater with an intricately shaped dune field. The dune material likely comprises locally eroded sediments that have been shaped by prevailing winds. Other smaller craters in the region also contain these dark deposits. … Continue reading →

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HRSC: Phobos and Jupiter align

Posted on May 13, 2014 by rburnham

Even though it may only be a lump of porous rock, Phobos isn’t shy about hogging the limelight in this sequence taken by ESA’s Mars Express. These three images show Phobos, the larger of the two martian moons, darting across … Continue reading →

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HRSC: Beauty from chaos

Posted on April 10, 2014 by rburnham

Beautiful streamlined islands and narrow gorges were carved by fast-flowing water pounding through a small, plateau region near the southeastern margin of the vast Valles Marineris canyon system. Images captured on 7 December 2013 by ESA’s Mars Express show the … Continue reading →

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HRSC: Daedalia Planum closeup

Posted on March 6, 2014 by rburnham

Close-up view of the two dominant lava flows that reach the foot of the highland terrain (seen at the top of the image in this orientation). The older of the two eruptions produced the smooth lava surface to the south … Continue reading →

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HRSC image: Flood after the impact

Posted on February 11, 2014 by rburnham

Large and small, hundreds of thousands of craters scar the surface of Mars, hollowed out by a multitude of asteroids and comets that impacted the Red Planet throughout its history. This image shows a region of the planet’s northern hemisphere … Continue reading →

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Mars Express: 10 years at Mars

Posted on January 22, 2014 by rburnham

Ten years ago, on 14 January 2004, Mars Express took its very first images of Mars in colour and in 3D. To mark the occasion, the team produced a fly-through movie of the ancient flood plain Kasei Valles. The movie … Continue reading →

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Lava flows resurfaced crater lakes after water was gone

Posted on January 1, 2013 by rburnham

Fire and water didn’t mix when it came to resurfacing basins that lie along Martian fluvial valley networks. A study of some 30 open-basin lakes (paleolakes) with floors covered by lava flows has concluded that at least these basins were … Continue reading →

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