Close up of a crater more than 100km wide on Mars

The European Space Agency's (ESA) Mars Express probe has conducted a flight to survey the volcanic crater of the Neukum Crater over 100km of Mars.

Large crater Neukum Crater has previously been known through preliminary surveys of the US National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA). While NASA focused on geological surveys and surrounding areas, ESA published close-up images of legendary craters.

The crater is named after German planetary physicist and scientist Gerhard Neukum, located in an area called Noachis Terra - one of Mars's oldest geological vestiges. The material here is about 3.9 billion years old. Noachis Terra is also the active area of ​​Mars Curiosity rover - NASA's robot once a single citizen on the red planet.

This crater is over 100km wide - (photo: ESA).

Crater seen from afar as a small round hole, is what remains of a "super volcano" - (photo: ESA).

Mars Express spacecraft - (photo: ESA).

Between the crater there is a black sand dune containing volcanic material - (photo: ESA).

Close up of volcanic dunes - (photo: ESA).

According to the exploration results, the crater has many geological signs showing low pressure episodes, earthquakes that have occurred, plus dark dunes that can be material from volcanic eruptions.

Super volcanoes with mouths up to 100km are believed to be one of the "gods" that have created the arid fire today.

Previous studies have shown that Mars was once a "green planet" like Earth with most of the area being an ocean. It is very possible that life existed at that time.

However, an estimated catastrophe occurring more than 3 billion years ago has dramatically changed the climate of the planet. Scientists believe it is due to the giant volcanic eruptions, releasing large amounts of ash and lava.

Extremely terrible consequences because people find on numerous stars "super volcanoes" can be thousands of times stronger than normal volcanoes on earth. Fortunately, they are in a temporary sleep state.