What lies on the floor of this Martian crater? A frozen patch of water ice. The robotic Mars Express spacecraft took the above image in early February. The ice pocket was found in a 35-kilometer wide crater that resides 70 degrees north of the Martian equator. There, sunlight is blocked by the 300-meter tall crater wall from vaporizing the water-ice on the crater floor into the thin Martian atmosphere. The ice pocket may be as deep as 200 meters thick. Frost can be seen around the inner edge on the upper right part of the crater, while part of the lower left crater wall is bathed in sunlight.
June 8th, 2005
Green light for the deployment of the second MARSIS boom
Following in-depth analyses performed after the deployment of the first MARSIS antenna boom on board Mars Express, ESA has decided to proceed with the deployment of the second 20-metre antenna boom. The full operation will be performed during a time frame starting 13 June and nominally ending on 21 June.
May 19th, 2005
New Photos are First of Spacecraft Orbiting Mars
A NASA spacecraft circling Mars has spied, for the first time, two of its fellow probes orbiting the red planet. Red planet veteran Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) successfully photographed NASA
May 9th, 2005
Deployment of second MARSIS boom delayed
The deployment of the second antenna boom of the Mars Express Sub-Surface Sounding Radar Altimeter (MARSIS) science experiment has been delayed pending investigation of an anomaly found during deployment of the first antenna boom.
May 9th, 2005
Mars Express Probe Suffers Radar Deployment Snag
A European probe circling Mars has hit a snag in the deployment of a water-seeking radar instrument, prompting mission controllers to delay the experiment while engineers investigate the problem. Flight controllers for the European Space Agency
April 29th, 2005
Mars Express radar to be deployed in May
Following green light for the deployment of ESA
April 24th, 2005
The mesas of Aureum Chaos
These images, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA