See Mars in 3-D

[mickw]

The towering 3-D features of Martian canyons and highlands are about to stand out like never before, thanks to data from a high-resolution camera on the Mars Express orbiter.

These data, collected by the camera on the European Space Agency's Mars Express, are allowing scientists to create so-called Digital Terrain Models (DTMs) to look around the Martian surface from different directions and angles, as opposed to the usual bird's-eye view from above provided by previous Mars orbiter cameras. The new data sets have now been released on the Internet, the European Space Agency announced this week.

"Understanding the topography of Mars is essential to understanding its geology," said Gerhard Neukum, HRSC lead scientist at Freie Universität (FU) in Berlin, Germany.

More: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080214-mars-3D.html

Links at the end of the story to image - v. cool