From its long vigil above the red planet, the Mars Express orbiter has turned its eye toward Schiaparelli crater — a place both ancient in geology and young in human imagination — releasing high-resolution video that bridges the distance between scientific inquiry and cultural longing. Named for the astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli and made famous anew by a Hollywood survival story, this vast impact scar now moves across our screens in motion, revealing billions of years of Martian history with a clarity that static images could never offer. It is a reminder that the places we first visit in f
Mars Express captures stunning video of Schiaparelli crater from 'The Martian'
The crater that exists only in fiction on Earth has become a real place we can now see in motion.
Mark
Why release this particular video now, of this particular crater? It seems like a deliberate tie-in to the movie.
Mimi
It probably is, but that's not cynical—it's smart. Mars Express has been sending back imagery for over twenty years. The crater itself is real and scientifically interesting. But yes, naming it in connection with "The Martian" gives people a reason to actually look at the video instead of scrolling past it.
Mark
So the science is secondary to the marketing?
Mimi
Not secondary. Parallel. The video is genuinely useful for researchers studying impact craters and erosion. But if only scientists watched it, fewer people would know what Mars actually looks like. The movie connection is a bridge.
Mark
What does the video show that we couldn't see before?
Mimi
Motion. You see the crater from different angles as the orbiter passes over it. You get a sense of depth, of scale, of how the walls slope and break. A still image is flat. This is three-dimensional.
Mark
Does it change what we know about Mars?
Mimi
Not fundamentally. But it refines it. Every image adds detail to the geological record. And it keeps the public watching. That matters for funding, for interest, for the next generation of explorers.
Mark
So we're still living in the world that "The Martian" created—where Mars is a place we might actually go.
Mimi
Exactly. The movie made Mars feel possible. This footage makes it feel real.
Der Puls
- A spacecraft that has orbited Mars for over two decades has released something genuinely new: not a photograph, but a moving portrait of one of the planet's most iconic craters.
- The footage captures Schiaparelli's rim, floor, and surrounding terrain in high resolution, conveying scale and texture that still images flatten into abstraction.
- The release is strategically timed — agencies know that public imagination, once lit by a film like 'The Martian,' can sustain the political and cultural will needed to fund real science.
- Scientists gain refined data on impact formation and erosion rates; the public gains something rarer — the sensation of hovering above an alien world in real time.
- The video lands as Mars exploration accelerates, with rovers on the surface and new missions in development, making this footage both a scientific record and a call forward.
From its long vigil above the red planet, the Mars Express orbiter has turned its eye toward Schiaparelli crater — a place both ancient in geology and young in human imagination — releasing high-resolution video that bridges the distance between scientific inquiry and cultural longing. Named for the astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli and made famous anew by a Hollywood survival story, this vast impact scar now moves across our screens in motion, revealing billions of years of Martian history with a clarity that static images could never offer. It is a reminder that the places we first visit in fiction often become the places we most urgently wish to understand in fact.
The Mars Express orbiter, circling Mars since 2003, has released striking new video of Schiaparelli crater — the real geological feature that Ridley Scott chose as the fictional crash site in his 2015 film 'The Martian.' Roughly 471 kilometers in diameter and located in the Ptolemaeus Quadrangle region, the crater has long been a subject of scientific study. What this new footage adds is motion: as the spacecraft traces its orbital path, the crater's rim, floor, and surrounding terrain unfold across multiple angles, giving viewers a sense of scale and topography that no single image can convey.
The release reflects a deliberate strategy by the European Space Agency and its partners. Public interest and scientific inquiry, once treated as separate concerns, are increasingly understood as mutually reinforcing. By anchoring this footage to a cultural touchstone, mission operators keep broader audiences engaged with planetary science while delivering researchers detailed data on erosion patterns, impact formation, and Mars's long climatic history.
What emerges from the footage is something quietly profound — the texture of a world billions of years in the making, now visible in motion from thousands of kilometers above. The crater that existed only in fiction for many viewers has become a real place, seen from above, in unprecedented detail. As new missions continue to take shape, imagery like this serves a dual purpose: it documents what is, and it stirs the imagination toward what might yet be.
The Mars Express orbiter, a spacecraft that has been circling Mars since 2003, has released new video footage of Schiaparelli crater—the same fictional landing site where Matt Damon's character Mark Watney found himself stranded in Ridley Scott's 2015 film "The Martian." The footage, captured from orbit, offers a detailed aerial perspective of the crater's rim, floor, and surrounding terrain, rendered in high resolution as the spacecraft passed overhead.
Schiaparelli crater, located in the Ptolemaeus Quadrangle region of Mars, became lodged in popular culture when the film depicted it as the crash site of the Ares 3 mission. The crater itself is a real geological feature on Mars, roughly 471 kilometers in diameter, and has been a subject of scientific interest long before Hollywood took notice. What makes this new video release significant is not the crater's fictional fame, but rather what it demonstrates about current orbital imaging capabilities—the ability to capture and transmit detailed moving imagery of the Martian surface from thousands of kilometers away.
Mars Express, a joint mission of the European Space Agency and the Russian Federal Space Agency, carries multiple instruments designed to study the planet's geology, atmosphere, and subsurface. The orbiter's high-resolution camera system has been systematically documenting the Martian landscape for more than two decades, building an archive of imagery that serves both scientific research and public engagement. This particular release appears timed to capitalize on the enduring cultural interest in Mars exploration sparked by "The Martian," which depicted humanity's capacity to survive and problem-solve on an alien world.
The video itself shows the crater from multiple angles as the orbiter moves along its trajectory, revealing the topography in ways that static images cannot convey. The viewer gains a sense of the crater's scale and the texture of its walls—the erosion patterns, the debris fields, the subtle variations in elevation that tell the story of billions of years of geological processes. For scientists studying Mars, such footage helps refine understanding of impact crater formation, erosion rates, and the planet's climatic history. For the general public, it offers something more immediate: a window into an alien landscape that feels almost tangible.
The release of this footage underscores a broader shift in space exploration strategy. Agencies increasingly recognize that public interest and scientific inquiry are not separate goals but complementary ones. By releasing imagery tied to cultural touchstones like "The Martian," Mars Express operators keep the public engaged with ongoing planetary science while simultaneously providing researchers with detailed data. The crater that exists only in fiction on Earth has become a real place we can now see in motion, from above, in unprecedented detail.
As Mars exploration continues to accelerate—with multiple rovers currently operating on the surface and new missions in development—imagery like this serves as both inspiration and documentation. It reminds us that the places we imagine in stories are often grounded in real geography, and that our tools for seeing distant worlds have become sophisticated enough to satisfy both the scientist's need for data and the explorer's hunger for discovery.
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