The Digital Terrain Model (DTM) pictures have been built up thanks to a high-resolution stereoscopic camera aboard Mars Express, the ESA orbiter.

Mars has extraordinary canyons and plains as well as the highest known mountain in the Solar System - Mons Olympus, an extinct volcano that towers some 27,000 metres above the planet's surface.

'The DTM can instantly tell researchers the slope of hillsides or the height of cliffs, the altitude and slope of lava flows or desert plains,' ESA said on its website.

The pictures will also help scientists trying to figure out how water once flowed across Mars.

The DTMs show contours in different colours and can be manipulated to give views from different angles or zoom in on a specific feature. -- AFP