ESA Article
Cascading dunes in A Martian creater
A new mosaic from ESA’s Mars Express shows a swirling field of dark dunes cascading into sunken pits within a large impact crater.
The mosaic was created from two images taken on 7 December 2005 and 9 January 2014, and focuses on the 108 km-wide Rabe crater. The region is 320 km to the west of the large Hellas impact basin, about halfway between the planet’s equator and south pole.



Wind-sculpted dunes and impact craters are common features on Mars but here we can see them combined, creating a stunning vista.
Rabe crater has an interesting topography: its flat floor has a number of smaller craters and large sunken pits within it. The bulk of the dune material sits atop the flat remnant of the original crater floor, but then some of it spills dramatically down into the pits below.

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