One of my all-time favourite images of Mars is this enhanced colour image captured by ESA's Mars Express orbiter on 17 June 2019. It shows a beautiful slice of the Red Planet stretching from the north polar cap to the northern rim of Hellas Planitia, highlighting the crater surface of Terra Sabaea and Arabia Terra. The original image has a resolution of about 1 km/pixel.
To the north, two craters stand out to me: Lyot (a complex crater in Vastitas Borealis) and Moreux (a smaller but visually darker crater in a geologically complex region of Arabia Terra). Near the centre of frame are a pair of large but shallow craters: Cassini and Tikhonravov. To the south lies Huygens, the largest crater on Mars with a well defined rim.
About the mission
Mars Express was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on 2 June 2003 and entered into orbit around Mars in record time on 25 December 2003. It's the second longest lasting Mars orbiter in history after NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter.
Due to its flexibility and importance in the study of Mars, the mission has been repeatedly extended to as far out as 2026, with a further provisional extension to 2028 likely. It's hard to believe that this was the same orbiter that deployed the failed Beagle 2 lander to the Martian surface almost 20 years ago.
Launched in June 2003, ESA’s Mars Express has been studying all aspects of the Red Planet for more than 15 years. Later this year it will celebrate its 20 000th orbit of Mars. This graphic highlights some of the mission’s impressive numbers to date, which will certainly continue to increase over time.