Keeping cool on Mars

"Scientists combined several images from Mars Express to create this 3-dimensional image of a 35-kilometer-wide, unnamed crater in the far northern hemisphere.

"Last week, ground controllers successfully deployed the second of two 20-meter-long booms belonging to MARSIS, the Mars Express' powerful ground-penetrating radar. The successful deployment of its third boom, which is seven meters long, could be announced very soon. Once science operations commence, that instrument could map water ice as much as several kilometers beneath the planet's surface.

"Meanwhile, the High Resolution Stereo Camera continues to take breathtaking images, like the one above. On February 2nd, the spacecraft flew over this 35-kilometer-wide crater in Vastitas Borealis, a broad plain that covers much of Mars's far northern latitudes. Back on Earth, scientists at Free University in Berlin, Germany, combined several HRSC images of the crater to create this three-dimensional picture. The image reveals a patch of ice that could be a few tens of centimeters thick. The ice itself overlies a dune field."