Valles Marineris from Mars Express
Looking down from orbit on January 14, ESA's
Mars
Express spacecraft scanned a 1700 by 65 kilometer
swath across
Valles Marineris - the Grand Canyon of Mars -
with its remarkable High Resolution Stereo Camera.
This spectacular picture
reconstructs part of the scanned
region from the stereo colour image data recording the rugged
terrain with a resolution of 12 metres per pixel.
Joining Mars
Global Surveyor and
Mars Odyssey,
Mars Express
has been orbiting the red planet since December 25th,
returning scientific data, acting as a communications relay, and
even making coordinated
atmospheric observations with NASA's
Spirit
rover on the surface.
The Beagle 2
lander was released from Mars Express making
a landing attempt also on December 25th,
but no signal has been received so far.