As the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter flies over Mars, its HiRISE camera captures high-resolution photos of the planet’s rugged surface.
Tens of thousands of those images have since been transformed into anaglyphs which can be viewed in 3D through special glasses.
But, impressive as that service is, it’s not necessarily the most convenient way of getting a glimpse of the Red Planet.
In a bid to bring the images to life, Jan Frodjman, a Finnish filmmaker, has transformed the HiRISE imagery into a stunning video.
He told Wired that it was a “very slow process” that required him to colourise the black and white photos before stitching them together and rendering them as frames in a video to create the 3D effect.
The project could have been carried out by a computer program, but Frodjman was determined to stick together the images manually.
The mesmerising end-result took three months to create.
Alongside NASA’s 4K footage of Earth, it’s among the best videos of space we’ve ever seen.