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ChromaDepth
Section III: Space
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Mars: Valles Marineris (Mariner Valley)
Description: The Valles Marineris is an enormous canyon system, four miles deep, more than 100 miles wide, and roughly 2,700 miles long. For comparison, the Grand Canyon is only one mile deep.
On Earth, the Valles Marineris would almost span the United States.
Things to Notice:
- The canyon seems to be a fault valley, like Death Valley on Earth, not a huge riverbed, Some features at the eastern end of the valley seem to have formed from water erosion, and the canyon may have held water when Mars was young.
- The mountain in the northwest is an extinct volcano, Ascraeus Mons. Its summit is more than seven miles above the surrounding plain. (On Earth, this would be about a mile taller than Mount Everest!) You can seethe Ascraeus Mons lava field to its east and south.
- The fact that there are no craters visible in the northwest indicates that the volcano last erupted after the bombardment of meteorites that cratered the highland plain in the northeast.
- The fact that the lava field is visible south of the Valles Marineris indicates that the uplift that caused this giant fault system occurred after the last volcanic eruption.
This terrain height data is from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter instrument on the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft.
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