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Flight through Schiaparelli Crater - Special PR #2 2026
This film was created using the Mars Express High-Resolution Stereo Camera Mars Chart (MC20W) data, an image mosaic made from single orbit observations of the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). The mosaic image is combined with topography information from the digital terrain model (DTM) to generate a three-dimensional landscape.
Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin & NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO) » Copyright Notice
Image Processing
For every second of the movie 50 separate frames are rendered following a pre-defined camera path in the scene. The view is centered at 8°S and 17°E. The vertical exaggeration used for the animation is 3-fold. Atmospheric effects, like clouds and haze have been added to conceal the limits of the terrain model. The haze starts building up at 250 km distance. 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 shown here.
Journey across the Schiaparelli Crater
Overview of MC20W with prominent features and the flight path
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.
High Resolution Stereo Camera
The High Resolution Stereo Camera was developed at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and built in collaboration with partners in industry (EADS Astrium, Lewicki Microelectronic GmbH and Jena-Optronik GmbH). The science team, which is headed by Principal Investigator (PI) Dr. Daniela Tirsch, consists of 52 co-investigators from 34 institutions and 11 countries. The camera is operated by the DLR Institute of Space Research in Berlin-Adlershof.
HRSC Dataset
The HMC30 products include multi-orbit DTMs and orthorectified image mosaics derived from HRSC images, as well as follow-up products such as pan-sharpened color mosaics. HMC30 data products are organized according to a modified version of the USGS MC-30 tiling scheme. All HMC30 products are based on bundle-block adjustment of the stereo images, are registered to the global MOLA reference.
