This film takes the viewer on a journey across the southern highlands to the Schiaparelli Crater, located in the Sinus Sabaeus quadrangle (HMC-20). It starts at Evros Vallis in the south of Schiaparelli Crater, heading northwards to an unnamed compound crater complex, then flying over the southern part of Schiaparelli’s extensive valley network to cross the crater rim from the west. The film continues in a clockwise curve through the crater interior, leaving several wrinkle ridges and smaller craters behind, to finish with a steep climb over Brazos Valles south of Schiaparelli. The crater is about 450 km in diameter and was named after italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli (1835-1910). The surrounding southern highlands consist of densely cratered, rugged terrain, which covers much of the equatorial to southern latitudes of Mars.

Evros Vallis is an ancient, about 360 km long valley located south of the large Schiaparelli impact basin. It shows strong geomorphic evidence that liquid water once has flown across parts of Mars’ southern highlands. It was probably formed in the Late Noachian period (about 3.8 to 3.7 billion years ago), when climate on Mars was warmer and wetter than today. Under these conditions rivers and lakes could have formed through precipitation, snowmelt or groundwater-leakage.

Schiaparelli Crater is one of the largest craters on Mars that despite the large diameter displays only shallow depth. This could mean, that over the last billions of years it has been filled by wind-blown sediments, lava flows or deposits from flowing or standing waters. On the crater floor several large sinuous ridges (‘wrinkle ridges’), some of which show a concentric shape following the crater geometry, give a clue about which processes had been working inside the crater: the common explanation is that these ridges have been formed by tectonic stresses caused by the infilling with lava and/or sediments. The large elevated terrain near the south rim inside the crater probably has been emplaced from the outside after crater formation, whereas the large wavy band of dark material that seems to be caught between crater wall and elevated terrain is probably of volcanic origin, deposited by aeolian processes.