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!
An oblique perspective view of a portion of the south polar Australe Scopuli region on Mars. It features an array of periglacial landforms including exposed layers of ice and dust (top right), dark patterned terrain (top left) and bright and dark fans, which dominate this view.
The image was generated from the digital terrain model and the nadir and colour channels of the High Resolution Stereo Camera on ESA’s Mars Express.
[Image description: A perspective view of periglacial features in undulating terrain near the south pole of Mars. Densely packed groups of icy bright and dusty dark fan/arrowhead-like shapes dominate the image, their tails streaking out in the direction of the wind. At top left there is a patch of dark terrain made up of dusty polygon shapes bounded by ice. An exposed stack of bright and dark layers of ice and dust are just seen at top right.]