Many of us have dreamed of flying on the surface of Mars. There are many interesting places to examine on the planet, and future astronauts should consider doing so themselves. The Mars Express spacecraft has been mapping the Red Planet for many years. Now it takes a closer look at us using an animation of thousands of images of Mars taken from its cameras.

One of the brightest places on Mars is Noctis Labyrinthus, which means “Labyrinth of the Night” in Latin. It is located between Mars’ Marineris Valley and the giant volcanoes of the Pharsidian Salient.

This fragmented land is a system of valleys stretching for approximately 1,200 kilometers. Scientists have combined images from ESA’s Mars Express with a remarkable flyby of the region, giving us a tasty hint of what future explorers will see.

What led to the emergence of Noctis Labyrinthus?

This maze of valleys appeared overnight. This is a fault zone in the center of the area called the Tharsis Hills. Essentially, the valleys were formed when volcanism in the Tharsis region created a bulge that caused much of the surrounding area to fold upward. This created tectonic tensions in the surrounding areas.

The crust actually thinned and structures called “grabens” formed. (“Graben” means “grave.”) Think of grabens as trenches of material that accumulate as the crust thins and expands. In addition, faults occur in a large part of the region. The depth of some grabens reaches 5,000 meters, which is evidence that tectonic forces operated on ancient Mars.

Flying over this area of ​​Mars

Flying over the Noctis Labyrinth is a journey through time. For example, the highest plateaus in the images are the original surface level. Imagine what it looked like before tectonic activity and pieces falling off the surface.

The intersecting canyons and valleys formed by volcanic tensions may seem small here, but they are up to 30 km wide and up to 6 km deep. For thousands of years, giant landslides rolled down hillsides, covering ancient land features.

Large sand dune areas can also be seen on other slopes of the valley. They were formed when Martian winds threw sand onto the surface. Overall, this overpass provides information about millions of years of geological history.

This is like flying over the Grand Canyon on Earth and examining the fault zone at its base. Such an overpass would reveal the oldest structures cluttering the Canyon.

Creation of Mars’ flyover

It’s nice to imagine Mars Express focusing a high-resolution camera on the surface. However, this film consists of many individual images. The images come from more than eight Mars Express orbiters.

In addition to the images, the team also combined the images with topographic information from the digital terrain model. This helped the rendering team create a 3D landscape where each second of the video consisted of 50 individual frames rendered according to a predetermined camera path.

In addition to showing the ancient history of Mars, the video also shows some history of the Mars Express. The opening credits (Mars sphere, first 24 seconds) were created using a spherical color mosaic of Mars from the last 20 years.

Added a haze to hide terrain model boundaries. It begins to accumulate at intervals of 150 to 200 km. The video is centered at Mars coordinates 7°S, 265°S.