Scientists from the University of Arizona (UA) have released on Monday a new batch of images described as "breathtaking" showing Mars' Valles Marineris, known as the largest and deepest canyon in the solar system.
Using an incredibly high-resolution camera called HiRISE (short for High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, UA scientists have been taking close-up shots of the planet's strangest features in an attempt to understand how it was formed.
This gash in the bedrock of Mars is nearly 10 times as long as Earth's Grand Canyon and three times deeper, making it the largest canyon in the solar system, said UA scientists.
According to a report by the Live Science website, unlike Earth's Grand Canyon, Valles Marineris probably wasn't carved out by billions of years of rushing water; the Red Planet is too hot and dry to have ever accommodated a river large enough to slash through the crust like that.
The European Space Agency (ESA) explained that a majority of the canyon probably cracked open billions of years earlier, when a nearby super-group of volcanoes known as the Tharsis region was first thrusting out of the Martian soil. As magma bubbled up beneath these monster volcanoes (which include Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the solar system), the planet's crust easily could have stretched, ripped and finally collapsed into the troughs and valleys that make up Valles Marineris today.
Evidence suggests that subsequent landslides, magma flows and, even some ancient rivers probably contributed to the canyon's continued erosion. Further analysis of high-resolution photos like these will help solve the puzzling origin story of the solar system's grandest canyon.
The Valles Marineris was discovered in 1971 with the Mariner 9 probe that launched on May 30, 1971 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and reached Mars on November 13 in the same year. The valley, which runs along the Martian equator, was named after the mission that discovered it.
