The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
Go to topicThank you for liking
You have already liked this page, you can only like it once!
The biggest postcard in the world does not fit into any known terrestrial letterbox. It measures 24 metres by 1. 35 metres and shows a 3700-kilometre long, 166-kilometre wide strip of Martian landscape in south-north direction.
This postcard of Mars shows a section of surface covering 380 000 square kilometres, an area bigger than Germany. It contains 2.5 gigabytes of uncompressed data. The picture was taken from an altitude of between 275 and 830 kilometres by the HRSC on board ESA's Mars Express orbiter. Because of the varying height from which the photograph was, the section of Mars shown has also different dimensions: at the start, the width is 166 kilometres, at the orbiter's closest point to Mars the width is 62 kilometres, and at the end it is 78 kilometres. The picture starts at 52 degrees South and ends at 12 degrees North, the Gusev crater and the NASA Spirit rover landing site lies at about 14.5 degrees South. The European Mars Express spacecraft flies at a speed of one to four kilometres per second over the surface of Mars, depending on its altitude.