Earth's Sister Planet: Mars

What does Mars really look like? In real color? And what would it have looked like hundreds of millions--or even billions--of years ago?

Mars's thin atmosphere is very dusty, so it has taken European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft thousands of passes around the planet--and tens of thousands of photos--to assemble a complete, detailed, high-resolution image of the planet's surface.

Below is a link to the gallery of those images and of maps which make Mars look pretty similar to Earth--you can see mountains, valleys, rivers and seas. That's what Mars could have (and probably did) looked like in the distant past, before it lost most of its atmosphere, its waters evaporated or became frozen just under its surface, and all life (assuming there ever was any) became extinct. (Unless it has somehow survived underground...but that's another theory and another story:)

Click below and check out a gallery of stunning true color images (and corresponding maps) taken by ESA spacecraft over the past 20 years (2003-2023). The descriptions are unfortunately in German; however, the sandy/red/yellowish images are usually shot in real-color, while the colorful, bright red, green and blue ones are the corresponding maps, showing altitude (mountain peaks, valleys, rivers, etc.).

https://www.flickr.com/photos/dlr_de/albums/72157650010833278/