The European Space Agency is already starting to get disillusioned with the chances of finding the Beagle and provides Mars Express with more productive work
The Mars Express spacecraft, which successfully entered orbit around Mars on December 25, 2003, should soon reach its final orbit over the Martian poles. The study of the photographs has only just begun and the first results look very promising, such as the close-up seen in the image above.
The first high-resolution images of Mars have already been taken. The first stereoscopic image was taken on January 14 by the Mars Express spacecraft from an altitude of 276 kilometers by the spacecraft's stereo camera. This picture is on the site
The image shows a section of a channel 1,700 kilometers long and 65 kilometers wide in a north-south direction along the Grand Canyon of Mars (Wallis Marineris). This is the first image of this size to show the surface in high resolution (12 meters per pixel), in color and in 120D. The full area of the image on the ground of Mars (in the upper left corner) is XNUMX thousand square kilometers. The lower part of the image shows the same area in perspective as if it were seen from a low-flying plane. This view is computer generated from the original photo data. One look at the landscape shows that it was shaped by water erosion. Millions of cubic kilometers of rock have been moved, and the formations on the surface are now seen as mountain ranges, valleys and plateaus (table mountains).
This camera is just one of the Mars collectibles aboard the Mars Express.
