Fly around Schiaparelli Crater with Mars Express

Video: 00:04:10 ESA’s Mars Express takes us on another mesmerising flight, this time around one of the biggest craters on Mars. Despite measuring a huge 460 km across, Schiaparelli Crater seems to be relatively shallow. Perhaps it has been filled in over the last few billion years by sediment blown by the wind or deposited by water, by lava – or by a combination of all three. Schiaparelli Crater is named after Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli (1835–1910). Although he studied Mercury and Venus, he is best known for his observations of the Red Planet. During the ‘Great Opposition’ of 1877, when Mars passed close to Earth, Schiaparelli mapped the planet, perceiving several straight dark lines across the red surface. He assumed that these were natural water-filled channels and used the equivalent Italian word, ‘canali’. However, other astronomers thought he meant canals, meaning artificial irrigation and transportation routes, which led to a few astronomers, and a large number of the general public, believing that they had been created by intelligent martians. Now we know that Schiaparelli’s ‘canali’ were illusions created by the comparatively poor tel…