Department of Earth Sciences

15 years ago, on 10 January 10 2004, the first of thousands of detailed images of the Martian surface was captured by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC), which is a German research instrument onboard the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft, in orbit around Mars since 25 December 2003. HRSC was developed at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and is operated by the DLR Institute of Planetary Research in Berlin-Adlershof. During the last 15 years, HRSC has collected image data in more than 5000 out of 19000 flown orbits, resulting in a steadily increasing set of spectacular views of the Martian surface, image and digital terrain model mosaics, and movie releases. HRSC coverage of the Martian surface with high resolution (better than 20 meter per pixel) reached 80% by now. The animation shows some of the observational highlights of the mission.