The Mars Express spacecraft has been orbiting the red planet since December 2003. It captures important image data on Mars’ morphology and topography, as well as its volcanic, fluviatile, and glacial past, which will allow scientists to deduce further information about its climate history.

Researchers have spent the last few years merging image data to create a global map. The map sheets of Mars generated by Freie Universität Berlin and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Berlin-Adlershof are now to be used as a standard reference system for registering data from other cameras capturing images of Mars, which will then be made available to researchers.

The images were taken using a High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC), which was developed in collaboration with industrial partners at the DLR under the leadership of the physicist Professor Gerhard Neukum, who died in 2014. The geologist Professor Ralf Jaumann from Freie Universität Berlin headed the HRSC camera experiment from July 2013 to January 2021. His successor is planetologist Dr. Thomas Roatsch (DLR), who took the position in February 2021.