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Mars Express -- 5000 orbits and counting
Date:11/26/2007

On 25 December 2003, Europes first Mars orbiter arrived at the Red Planet. Almost four years later, Mars Express continues to rewrite the text books as its instruments send back a stream of images and other data. Today, the spacecraft reached another milestone in its remarkable career by completing 5000 orbits of Mars.

During its mission to investigate martian mysteries, the orbiter has revolutionised our knowledge of Mars, probing every facet of the Red Planet in unprecedented detail. Some of the most visually astonishing results have been returned by the High-Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC), which has produced breathtaking, 3D colour images of the diverse martian surface with giant volcanoes to sinuous valleys and ice-modified craters.

One of the most surprising discoveries has been the youthful appearance of the country-sized volcanoes of the Tharsis ridge, suggesting they may have been active only a few million years ago. The images also show that glacial landforms are widespread over much of the planet, with glacial activity continuing in some areas until perhaps 20 000 30 000 years ago. Among the peculiar landforms imaged by HRSC is what appears to be a recently frozen body of water in Elysium, close to the equator.

While the camera has been imaging the surface in exquisite detail, other instruments have been examining different aspects of the planets environment. One of the most significant results from the Visible and Infrared Mineralogical Mapping Spectrometer OMEGA has been the discovery of clays, hydrated minerals that formed early in the planets history, when liquid water was fairly abundant. However, the presence of sulphates and iron oxides suggests that the planet subsequently became colder and drier, with only episodic eruptions of water onto the surface.

At the poles, OMEGA has measured the surface composition and produced unprecedented maps of water ice and carbon dioxide ice. Further insights into the mart
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Contact: Agustin Chicarro
Achicarr@rssd.esa.int
31-715-653-613
European Space Agency
Source:Eurekalert

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