ESA’s Mars Express has spotted a rare case of a crater once filled by a lake, revealed by the presence of a delta. The delta is an ancient fan-shaped deposit of dark sediments, laid down in water. It is a reminder of Mars’ past, wetter climate. The delta is in the Eberswalde crater, in the southern highlands of Mars. The 65 km-diameter crater is visible as a semi-circle on the right of the image and was formed more than 3.7 billion years ago when an asteroid hit the planet. The rim of the crater is intact only on its right-hand side. The rest appears only faintly or is not visible at all. A later impact created the 140 km diameter Holden crater that dominates the centre and left side of the image. The expulsion of large amounts of material from that impact buried parts of Eberswalde. Picture Credit: ESA

Reaching for the Red Planet: UK Space Agency Announces £1.6million for Mars Exploration

Dec 16 2011

The UK Space Agency is making £1.6million available in support of projects to further explore our neighbouring planet
Mars and keep the UK at the forefront of ESA’s Aurora Programme a European long-term plan for the robotic and
human exploration of the solar system.

The new funding will support projects to better understand the past and present environment and geophysics of Mars,
characterise the biological environment of the planet and search for traces of past and present life.

The Aurora programme brings together the best of UK minds and industry, further develops our highly-skilled space sector and delivers economic impact through technology spin-outs.
The new funding scheme is open to academics and Research

Council Institutions for proposals to fund:

• Project Studentships to develop researchers to exploit future
data sets from Mars missions.

• Individual Fellowships to develop promising young
researchers or allow existing academics to discipline-hop.

• Research Assistants to support academics on Mars
related science.

• Support for academics to participate in international science
teams to exploit data from future missions such as Nasa's
Mars Science Laboratory (MSL).

For more information, please see Announcement of
Opportunity on the UK agency website at
www.bis.gov.uk/ukspaceagency