It’s a virtual mission to Mars.
Our first mission to Mars may still be a ways off, but people can take a virtual tour of the Red Planet thanks to a brand new video by the Mars Express Orbiter.
Since its launch 20 years ago by the European Space Agency, this cube-shaped space craft has been conducting detailed recon on fourth rock from the sun, Phys.org reported.
During that time, it has created the most comprehensive map of the Martian atmosphere and its chemical composition, examined Mars’s innermost moon (Phobos) in stunning detail, and traced the geographic features that indicate that liquid water once flowed freely on the red planet’s seemingly inhospitable surface.
In the latest footage, the Express Orbiter invites armchair astronomers to take a virtual fly-over of Xanthe Terra, a highland region just north of the equator.
Highlights of this virtual tour of the Martian landscape include the 62-mile wide Da Vinci crate and Shalbatan Vallis, an 800-mile outflow channel that scientists believe funneled water from the Southern Highlands into a planet-wide ocean in the Northern Lowlands.
The researchers created this digital adventure using a mosaic created from images taken during single-orbit observations by Mars Express’s High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC).
The images were then coupled with topography data from a digital terrain model (DTM) to construct a 3D view of the Red Planet’s surface, which was apparently home to “vacation-style” beaches and bodies of water that would be perfect for sun-loving Martians.
In fact, this breathtaking video comes amid a flurry of discoveries hinting that the seemingly desolate planet was once a watery wonderland.
Over the summer, NASA’s Curiosity rover snapped pictures of a long-sought geological structure — dubbed “spiderwebs” — on the Red Planet that indicate a history of flowing water.
“The images and data being collected are already raising new questions about how the Martian surface was changing billions of years ago,” NASA said in a statement. “The Red Planet once had rivers, lakes, and possibly an ocean. Although scientists aren’t sure why, its water eventually dried up and the planet transformed into the chilly desert it is today.”