Scientists have managed to film a landscape resembling a Grand Canyon on the planet Mars. The video has been revealed.
It is a Grand Canyon landscape, but unlike the American gorges, this one is inaccessible to humans because it is light years away from us. The European Space Agency has released a video of the Mars flyby which shows that the surface of the Red Planet is full of surprises. It is notably home to what looks like a giant labyrinth: the “Noctis Labyrinthus” (or “Labyrinth of the Night”).
This curiosity of the Martian landscape is located between the immense canyons of the Valles Marineris and the volcanoes of the Tharsis Bulge – the largest known volcanoes in the solar system – including Olympus Mons, a must for planetology enthusiasts. It was the planet’s volcanic activity that led to the formation of the nearly 1,200 kilometer labyrinth. A labyrinthine valley almost as big as Italy!
Under the effect of volcanic events, the Martian crust has stretched in height and the tectonic activity of the planet has led to the thinning and subsidence of the crust, as well as the formation of faults, explains the European Space Agency .
These images of the Noctis Labyrinthus are taken from observations by the Mars Express probe and were captured in eight different orbits around the planet. They were “combined with topographical information from a digital terrain model to generate a three-dimensional landscape. Each second of the video comprising 50 distinct images rendered according to a predefined camera path”, specifies the agency.
The heights of the Noctis Labyrinthus represent the surface level of Mars before land changes caused by millions of years of volcanism and tectonic activity. The dug faults – called “graben” meaning “graves” – are several kilometers deep and can also be very wide.
The most significant reliefs show that the faults can extend 30 km wide and reach 6 km deep. In these fissures, gigantic landslides created additional relief on the slopes of the faults. And in the absence of landslides, dune fields form under the effect of sand pushed by Martian winds.
The Mars labyrinth continues to evolve and the European Space Agency’s Mars Express probe still orbits the red planet. Its goal: to observe and map its surface, study its atmosphere, and explore “how various phenomena interact in the Martian environment.” We look forward to the next images.
