Take a Flight Over Korolev Crater on Mars

JULY 3, 2020 BY NANCY ATKINSON

We love flyover videos from other worlds. These stunning videos, created from imagery gathered by orbiting spacecraft, can give us a sense of what it would be like to fly in an airplane on another planet. This latest flyover video from the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft, provides a stunning view of one of Mars’ most eye-popping craters.

This movie was created using an imagery from Mars Express’ High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). The images are normally taken looking straight down (nadir), and the video combines topography information from the stereo channels of HRSC to generate a three-dimensional landscape, which was then recorded from different perspectives, as with a movie camera, to render the flight shown in the video.

Korolev Crater is 82 kilometers (50 miles) across and at least 2 km (1.25 miles) deep. This well-preserved crater is located the northern lowlands of Mars, just south of a large patch of dune-filled terrain that encircles part of the planet’s northern polar cap (known as Olympia Undae).



Overhead view of Korolev Crater on Mars, as seen by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft. Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin.

That’s not snow you’re seeing, but this crater is constantly filled with water ice, and its central mound is about 1.8 kilometers (1.1 miles) thick all year round. It’s one of the largest reservoirs of non-polar ice on Mars.

This view reminds me of a flight I took where I flew over Meteor Crater in Arizona USA. But for comparison, Meteor Crater is less than a mile across (.737 miles/1.186 km) and just 560 feet (170 m) deep.

More:
https://www.universetoday.com/146819/take-a-flight-over-korolev-crater-on-mars/