Mars Express: Flight Over Chaotic Terrain in Hydraotes Chaos

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• published: 20 Oct 2014
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Among the most interesting landforms on Mars are features referred to as 'chaotic terrain'. Dozens or even hundreds of isolated mountains up to 2000 metres high are scattered in these extensive regions. Seen from orbit, they form a bizarre, chaotic pattern. Such terrains are found over a large area to both the west and east of Valles Marineris, the largest canyon in the Solar System. Hydraotes Chaos is a typical example of this type of landscape. This large basin, approximately the size of the German state of Baden-Württemberg, lies in the Martian highlands, near the equator. Headwaters of large rivers that flowed from the highlands No comparable landforms are found on Earth. Scientists believe that water in the form of ice was stored in cavities beneath the surface of the highlands early in the history of Mars; this was then heated and thawed out. It was then placed under so much pressure that it escaped to the surface with great force through fissures and fault zones. As it flowed out, the water eroded the terrain and gradually left behind the striking landscape visible today. Another factor supporting this theory is that many of the chaotic terrains on Mars are located at the head of large outflow channels, through which enormous quantities of water flowed out of the highlands towards the northern lowlands. The quantities of water that were first stored in Hydraotes Chaos and then flowed northward through Simud Valles must have been enormous. They flowed away from a drainage area about 1500 kilometres in diameter, an area approximately the size of central Europe. The Hydraotes basin is 420 kilometres in diameter. It is thought to have formed a very long time ago – over three and a half billion years – during the Noachian Period on Mars. Generation of the images and animations The data used to generate these images and the simulated overflight were acquired with the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC), operated by the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) on board ESA's Mars Express spacecraft. Once again, image strips from orbit 18 – symbolically significant for the HRSC scientists – were edited and used for the animations and images shown here. Over 10 years ago, in January 2004, Mars Express flew over Hydraotes Chaos during orbit 18. This was the third time that the HRSC camera had been switched on, and the images in the image strips, which were over 1000 kilometres long, were so spectacular that they were drawn on for publication of the first images from the successful ESA mission. To be able to show the western half of the Hydraotes Chaos basin in a larger regional context, additional HRSC images from subsequent orbits were used for the large image mosaic. The region shown is around 400 by 200 kilometres. The images and animations were generated by the Planetary Sciences and Remote Sensing Group at Freie Universität Berlin, which was headed by Gerhard Neukum (1944 – 2014) from the beginning of the Mars Express mission. In memoriam – Gerhard Neukum Professor Neukum is considered the ‘father’ of the HRSC camera system. In the late 1980s, at the former Institute of Optoelectronics at the DLR site in Oberpfaffenhofen, he developed the idea for a High Resolution Stereo Camera for systematic, high-precision mapping of the Martian topography. An HRSC was originally flown on the Russian Mars 96 mission, which failed shortly after launch. Together with other colleagues, Professor Neukum, who was by then Director of the DLR Institute of Planetary Research in Berlin-Adlershof, energetically lobbied for a Mars mission under the aegis of the European Space Agency (ESA). This was the birth of ESA’s Mars Express mission, which has been orbiting Mars since 25 December 2003 and transmitting high-resolution 3D data from the HRSC experiment of the surface of Mars back to Earth. Gerhard Neukum passed away on 21 September 2014. He was one of the most prominent planetary researchers in Germany and one of the world’s recognised experts in the field. He made a name for himself in his chosen field with the work he conducted on the chronology of Solar System bodies. A 3D anaglyph version of this video is also available: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8PkBDkKuDg Release Date: 20 October 2014 Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin