The German Aerospace Center carries out a 3D virtual tour of Mars with images collected by the Mars Express

The Mars Express satellite has collected some snapshots, with an HRSC camera, with which the German Aerospace Center has made a 3D virtual video in which the surface of the red planet is seen in detail.

The German Aerospace Center (DLR) has released a video in which a virtual tour of the planet Mars is taken. A 3D walk whose images have been taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) incorporated into Mars Express, whose probe was equipped with nine sensors to capture the snapshots.

The almost complete 3D global view of Mars has been generated from the numerous images that have been taken as if it were a puzzle, creating a global map of red planet. Of the 145 million square kilometers of the surface of Mars, 97 millions have already been filmed in very high resolution.

Atmospheric features such as clouds, fog or the dreaded dust devils made it, sometimes, the image will be unusable, creating a void that was completed in the following overflights that were carried out.

The 3D view of the valleys, canyons and lava rivers is possible due to the imaging principle used by the camera. Nine light-sensitive detectors scan the surface in sequence from nine different viewing angles. This data is then processed into three-dimensional images by DLR researchers..

The European Space Agency's Mars Express satellite (ESA) was launched into space on 2 June 2001 and arrived on Mars six and a half months later. Since then it has already orbited the planet 12.500 capturing the snapshots that have made this 3D virtual tour possible and collecting information with the scientific instruments that were on board. With this data, a digital and almost global topographic model of the planet's surface has been created..

Among the discoveries that have been made, High-resolution stereo camera images have revealed that although conditions on Mars are no longer suitable for the existence of liquid water, There was a time when it did flow on the surface, traveling through deep valleys of the highlands. The level of detail is so precise in these snapshots that you can observe the geological processes in which the water was involved..

The music for this video was composed by Stephan Elgner, member of the Mars Express planetary mapping team at DLR, company responsible for the development and operations of stereo camera.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOPUdZtnt24#t=60 [/youtube]