ESA opens treasure trove of its TGO providing 24 views of Mars each day since 2018

It has been almost three years since the European Space Agency’s (ESA) ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) has been hovering over Mars. After getting installed in the Martian orbit in 2016 and beginning its operations two years later, the orbiter has provided over 11,000 images of the red planet’s surface at a rate of about 24 images per day. The ESA has now released a video made by compiling the images beamed back by the TGO which shows the Martian landscape in the highest resolution.

Images of the Martian landscape in best resolution ever

In a video shared by ESA, several breathtaking regions featuring craters and the south pole of the red planet have been shown. In the following image is the crater in the Tempa Terra region of Mars has been detailed courtesy of the CaSSIS instrument aboard the orbiter.

The next image shows the Hydraspis Chaos in a region of the red planet which appears to be shrouded in a colour of blue and gives us an idea about how Mars changes with a change in the landscape. As you can see, the surface looks abraded hinting towards impacts that must have occurred over Mars' billions of years of existence.

Moving ahead, the image you see below is also a still from ESA's video showing the varying landscapes of Mars. This picture features the Cerberus region of Mars where flowing lava has left a trail behind it after massive volcanic eruptions that were a common phenomenon on the red planet that continued for millions of years.

Next up is the Sirenum Fossae crater which anyone can tell is massive in size. Captured during the daytime on Mars, the crater has several other crests around it which also must have been a result of asteroid impacts.

In the next image are the intriguing features which, according to ESA, are layered deposits in Mars' south pole. The agency says that the TGO is mapping the Red Planet’s atmospheric gases along with signatures of buried water-ice below surfaces like these. Currently just snapping pictures of Mars, the TGO will work with the Rosalind Franklin ExoMars rover once it arrives on Mars in 2023.

Image: YouTube/@ESA