A new video gives a bird's-eye view of the patch of Mars that NASA's InSight lander now calls home.
The flyover video above, and available here on YouTube, shows the area in and around Elysium Planitia, the equatorial plain on which InSight touched down on Monday (Nov. 26).
“At the beginning, the supra-regional topography of the landing site is shown from various perspectives within a radius of a few hundred kilometers,” officials with the German Aerospace Center, known by its German acronym DLR, said in a statement Monday describing the video. [ NASA’s InSight Mars Lander: Full Coverage]
“The first scene shows the approach to the approximately 13-kilometer-high [8 miles] Elysium Mons volcano, from north to south,” the officials added . “This is followed by a loop and flight over Elysium Planitia, from southeast to northwest with a view of the landing ellipse.”
Researchers created the new animation using a digital terrain model, which incorporated image data gathered by DLR’s High Resolution Stereo Camera, which flies aboard the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter.
