Mars gets festive: Check out the planet's ice crater

If you're good at ice skating, you'd probably be tempted to try out your skills on this breathtaking sheet of ice.

The only problem is...the lack of oxygen in the atmosphere!

That's because this photo was taken on Mars by the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft.

The newly released image from the European Space Agency has been put together from five different 'strips' combined to form a single image, with each strip gathered over a different orbit.

This ice-filled crater is called the Korolev crater - it's is 82 kilometres in length and is found in the northern lowlands of Mars.

You certainly wouldn't be in any danger of falling through the surface. The ice is more than 1,799 metres thick all year long.

It's not just there over the Martian winter either! Due to something called the 'cold trap' phenomenon, the ice is a permanent fixture on the planet.

With ice on the base of the crater floor, more than a mile below the rim, it acts as a cold trap from below.

Air moving over the ice from above cools and sinks, creating a layer of cold air over the ice. This means the ice doesn't melt.

Mars-vellous!