The ESA has given a glimpse of the Lowell Crater in never before seen detail. The huge dent in the side of the planet stretches more than 200 kilometres across, and is believe to be around 3.9 billion years old. The crater has been named after US mathematician, astronomer and writer Percival Lowell, who founded the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, in 1894.

ESA established the stunning image through seven different Mars Express satellite flybys of the crater, which were merged into one spectacular photo.

Surrounding the Lowell Crater are huge mountains, which were created when a large asteroid pummelled into the region of Mars known as Aonia Terra, within the planet’s ancient southern highlands.

The ESA said: “This so-called ‘peak ring’ is thought to have formed along with the crater. The immense energy of a large impact event causes material to surge upwards before collapsing down again, forming the kind of complex morphology seen here, with an irregular mountain range encircling the crater’s centre, inside the main crater rim.”

Scientists at the ESA have compared it to the Chicxulub crater – the impact site in Mexico from when an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.