Flight over the most beautiful crater on Mars (video)

Scientists from the European Space Agency(ESA) embodied the dream of many earthlings and provided the opportunity to enjoy a bird's eye view of the Martian landscape. Astronomers used the video from the Mars Express automatic orbital station, which has been studying the Red Planet for more than 17 years, to edit the video. One of the most unique Martian objects, the Korolev crater, was chosen as an object for review.

Video created using imagesobtained from a high-resolution camera Mars Express (HRSC) filmed in the forward direction (nadir), integrated with topographic data from HRSC stereo channels. The material created on the basis of these data allows one to generate a three-dimensional model of the landscape and create the illusion of flying above the surface of Mars.

Korolev Crater is located in the northern partMars is the largest non-polar, natural storage of ice on the planet. The diameter of the crater is about 82 km and the depth is over 2 km. The well-defined, well-preserved Korolev crater is located south of the dune-covered plain that surrounds the northern polar part of the planet.

Unique crater turned into a giantnatural non-polar ice storage due to unique natural factors. Given that on Mars, atmospheric pressure is only 8 millibars compared with 1013 millibars on Earth, water ice should go from solid to gaseous.

However, the low temperature and unique structuresurfaces allow you to create a kind of thermal trap inside the crater, not allowing melt the ice layer, the thickness of which reaches 1.8 km. Martian air, cooling and becoming heavier, in relation to the surrounding atmosphere, descends directly to the surface of the ice. Being a poor conductor of heat, such an air layer turns into an effective protection against heating and evaporation of ice.

The name of the crater used the name of the geniusSoviet design engineer Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, who created the famous Katyusha, the first Soviet intercontinental R7 rocket, the Vostok launch vehicle for the spacecraft, on which Yuri Gagarin opened the era of human space travel.

Source: universetoday