Fly around Schiaparelli Crater with Mars Express

The European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft has produced a new 3D animation of Schiaparelli Crater, one of the largest impact basins on Mars, measuring 460 km across. The crater appears relatively shallow, likely due to infilling over billions of years by wind-blown sediment, water, or lava. This geological history provides clues about past environmental conditions on the planet.

Schiaparelli Crater is named after Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, who mapped Mars in 1877 and described dark lines he called ‘canali,’ mistakenly interpreted as artificial canals by some. While these features were later revealed as optical illusions, evidence suggests water once existed in the region, possibly as a lake. The crater also gained cultural prominence as the landing site for the protagonist in Andy Weir’s novel ‘The Martian.’

The animation was created using data from Mars Express’s High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC), combined with a digital terrain model to generate a three-dimensional landscape. For each second of the film, 50 frames were rendered along a predefined camera path, with a three-fold vertical exaggeration applied to highlight topographical features.

Atmospheric effects, including clouds and haze, were added to conceal the limits of the terrain model, beginning at a distance of 250 km. The HRSC camera is operated by the German Aerospace Center (DLR), with data processing conducted at the DLR Institute for Space Research in Berlin-Adlershof. The film was produced by the Planetary Science and Remote Sensing working group at Freie Universität Berlin.