ESO Top News

Explore the immense power of water as ESA’s Mars Express takes us on a flight over curving channels, streamlined islands and muddled ‘chaotic terrain’ on Mars, soaking up rover landing sites along the way.

This beautiful flight around the Oxia Palus region of Mars covers a total area of approximately 890 000 km², more than twice the size of Germany. Central to the tour is one of Mars’s largest outflow channels, Ares Vallis. It stretches for more than 1700 km and cascades down from the planet’s southern highlands to enter the lower-lying plains of Chryse Planitia.

Billions of years ago, water surged through Ares Vallis, neighbouring Tiu Vallis, and numerous other smaller channels, creating many of the features observed in this region today.

Enjoy the flight!

After enjoying a spectacular global view of Mars we focus in on the area marked by the white rectangle. Our flight starts over the landing site of NASA’s Pathfinder mission, whose Sojourner rover explored the floodplains of Ares Vallis for 12 weeks in 1997. 

Continuing to the south, we pass over two large craters named Masursky and Sagan. The partially eroded crater rim of Masursky in particular suggests that water once flowed through it, from nearby Tiu Vallis.

The Masurky Crater is filled with jumbled blocks, and you can see many more as we turn north to Hydaspis Chaos. This ‘chaotic terrain’ is typical of regions influenced by massive outflow channels. Its distinctive muddled appearance is thought to arise when subsurface water is suddenly released from underground to the surface. The resulting loss of support from below causes the surface to slump and break into blocks of various sizes and shapes.

Just beyond this chaotic array of blocks is Galilaei crater, which has a highly eroded rim and a gorge carved between the crater and neighbouring channel. It is likely that the crater once contained a lake, which flooded out into the surroundings. Continuing on, we see streamlined islands and terraced river banks, the teardrop-shaped island ‘tails’ pointing in the downstream direction of the water flow at the time.

Crossing over Ares Vallis again, the flight brings us to the smoother terrain of Oxia Planum and the planned landing site for ESA’s ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover. The primary goal of the mission is to search for signs of past or present life on Mars, and as such, this once water-flooded region is an ideal location.

Zooming out, the flight ends with a stunning bird’s-eye view of Ares Vallis and its fascinating water-enriched neighbourhood. 

Disclaimer: This video is not representative of how Mars Express flies over the surface of Mars. See processing notes below.

How the movie was made

This film was created using the Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera Mars Chart (HMC30) data, an image mosaic made from single orbit observations of the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). The mosaic, centred at 12°N/330°E, is combined with topography information from the digital terrain model to generate a three-dimensional landscape. 

For every second of the movie, 50 separate frames are rendered following a predefined camera path in the scene. A three-fold vertical exaggeration has been applied. Atmospheric effects such as clouds and haze have been added to conceal the limits of the terrain model. The haze starts building up at a distance of 300 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 Freie Universität Berlin used the data to create the film.

Zoom into Solar Orbiter's four new Sun images, assembled from high-resolution observations by the spacecraft's PHI and EUI instruments made on 22 March 2023. The PHI images are the highest-resolution full views of the Sun's visible surface to date, including maps of the Sun's messy magnetic field and movement on the surface. These can be compared to the new EUI image, which reveals the Sun's glowing outer atmosphere, or corona.

At ESA, through the Advanced Research in Telecommunications Systems programme, we’re addressing solutions for when safety and security of communication services cannot be guaranteed by the terrestrial networks alone. With our programme Space systems for Safety and Security, or 4S, we are pioneering cutting-edge development of secure and resilient satellite communication systems, technologies and services to improve life on Earth. 

Picture a world where our critical infrastructure is protected from cyber threats, and where communication links work when the world around them doesn't. A transportation network where safety is not just a priority, but a guarantee. Where air traffic flows completely efficiently, reliable and connected. Railways operate without interruption, and shipping can navigate safely and securely.

Imagine that our first responders are coordinating via seamless communications, and institutional agencies are acting rapidly and decisively when there's a crisis. All thanks to secure and safe satellite communication systems, orbiting above the planet. This is the future we're building with the 4S programme. A future where space systems safeguard our security, making sure that connectivity remains our greatest strength. Join us as we continue to push the boundaries of innovation.

As Arctic temperatures rise, marine-terminating glaciers—especially in places like Svalbard—are undergoing rapid retreat and intensified calving.

The ESA-funded Space for Shore project utilises radar data from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission to provide precise, year-over-year insights into glacier retreat and calving intensity, particularly in areas like Kongsfjorden, where notable glaciers are experiencing significant retreat.

Proba-3

The double-satellite Proba-3 is the most ambitious member yet of ESA’s Proba family of experimental missions. Two spacecraft will fly together as one, maintaining precise formation down to a single millimetre. One will block out the fiery disc of the Sun for the other, to enable prolonged observations of the Sun’s surrounding atmosphere, or ‘corona’, the source of the solar wind and space weather. Usually, the corona can only be glimpsed for a few minutes during terrestrial total solar eclipses. Proba-3 aims to reproduce such eclipses for up to six hours at a time, in a highly elliptical orbit taking it more than 60 000 km from Earth. The two spacecraft are being launched together by India’s PSLV-XL launcher from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre. Follow the mission’s deployment and commissioning, up to its first glimpse of the corona, in this overview video.

Marking a major milestone in the preparation of Copernicus Sentinel-1C for its scheduled 3 December liftoff, experts have completed the critical and hazardous process of fuelling the satellite.

Once in orbit, Sentinel-1C will extend the Sentinel-1 mission’s legacy, delivering radar imagery to monitor Earth’s changing environment to support a diverse range of applications and scientific research. Additionally, Sentinel-1C brings new capabilities for detecting and monitoring maritime traffic

Week in images: 11-15 November 2024

Discover our week through the lens

Today, the European Space Agency signed six contracts that will help position Greece as a key player in the field of Earth observation.

Smile is the Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer, a brand-new space mission currently in the making. It will study space weather and the interaction between the solar wind and Earth’s environment.

Unique about Smile is that it will take the first X-ray images and videos of the solar wind slamming into Earth’s protective magnetic bubble, and its complementary ultraviolet images will provide the longest-ever continuous look at the northern lights.

In this first of several short videos, David Agnolon (Smile Project Manager) and Philippe Escoubet (Smile Project Scientist) talk about the why and the how of Smile. You’ll see scenes of the building and testing of the spacecraft’s payload module by Airbus in Madrid, including the installation of one of the European instruments, the Soft X-ray Imager from the University of Leicester.

Smile is a 50–50 collaboration between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). ESA provides the payload module of the spacecraft, which carries three of the four science instruments, and the Vega-C rocket which will launch Smile to space. CAS provides the platform module hosting the fourth science instrument, as well as the service and propulsion modules.

ESA is taking a significant step towards creating a more digitally inclusive Europe through a new partnership that will bring internet access to the hardest-to-reach areas. Reliable connectivity has become essential in today's digital age, yet for many Europeans in rural villages, mountainous regions, and small islands, dependable internet access remains out of reach.

A new European Space Agency-backed study shows that the extreme heatwaves of 2023, which fuelled huge wildfires and severe droughts, also undermined the land’s capacity to soak up atmospheric carbon. This diminished carbon uptake drove atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to new highs, intensifying concerns about accelerating climate change.

On 12 November 2014, after a ten-year journey through the Solar System and over 500 million kilometres from home, Rosetta’s lander Philae made space exploration history by touching down on a comet for the first time. On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of this extraordinary feat, we celebrate by taking a look back over the mission's highlights.

Rosetta was an ESA mission with contributions from its Member States and NASA. It studied Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko for over two years, including delivering lander Philae to the comet’s surface. Philae was provided by a consortium led by DLR, MPS, CNES and ASI.

Read the article Philae’s extraordinary comet landing relived.

On 12 November 2014, after a ten year journey through the Solar System and over 500 million kilometres from home, Rosetta’s lander Philae made space exploration history by touching down on a comet for the first time. On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of this extraordinary feat, we celebrate Philae’s impressive achievements at Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

12 November 2024 marks the start of a new year on Mars. At exactly 10:32 CET/09:32 UTC on Earth, the Red Planet begins a new orbit around our Sun.

Week in images: 04-08 November 2024

Discover our week through the lens

This compilation of images, captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission, showcases the characteristic hues of autumn in different European countries.