The sights of Mars are many and wonderful, and the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express orbiter recently captured one of the wonders of the planet, the Valles Marineris canyon system.
This enormous canyon system is nearly 2,500 miles long and over 120 miles wide, and is more than 4 miles deep in places. That makes it 20 times wider and five times deeper than Arizona’s Grand Canyon, according to the ESA. This gigantic size makes it the largest known canyon system in the solar system, and studying it can help researchers learn about the geologic processes that formed and continue to shape Mars.
This ESA Mars Express image shows Ius and Tithonium Chasmata, which are part of the Valles Marineris canyon structure on Mars. This image includes data collected by Mars Express’ High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on April 21, 2022. ESA/DLR/FU Berlin
The image, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on the Mars Express orbiter, shows two steep depressions called chasma: Ius Chasma on the left and Tithonium Chasma on the right. This is a true color image, meaning it shows the colors as your eye would see them, and you can see a large portion of dark dunes at the top of the image that look distinctly different from the lighter sand dunes which are seen elsewhere in the image. image The dark sand that forms these darker dunes may have come from a nearby volcanic region called Tharsis Province.
This oblique perspective view of Tithonium Chasmata, part of the Valles Marineris Canyon structure on Mars, was generated from the digital terrain model and nadir and color channels from the high-resolution stereo camera of the ESA’s Mars Express. ESA/DLR/FU Berlin
Another view of the Tithonium Chasmata was created from a digital terrain model made with data from the HRSC camera. This best shows the dramatic structure of the canyon, with large mountain-like structures rising nearly two miles high. The patterns seen cascading down from the summits are caused by erosion, as strong winds push material down the slopes.
These huge forests of the Martian landscape are believed to have been created when tectonic plates pulled apart. Mars is not tectonically active today, and for a long time scientists thought that plate tectonics existed only on Earth. But research in the last decade has suggested that Mars was also tectonically active, and canyon structures like this are remnants of that time.
Editors’ recommendations