Valles Marineris

Valles Marineris Latest News

A vastly larger outburst flood occurred on Mars during the Late Hesperian to Early Amazonian, when the breaching of paleolakes in Valles Marineris, the largest canyon system in the Solar System, unleashed a massive deluge.

About Valles Marineris

• Valles Marineris, or Mariner Valley, is a vast system of interconnected canyons on the planet Mars.
• The system was discovered during, and named for, the Mariner 9 mission in 1971.
• The canyons extend in an east-west direction for roughly 4,000 km just south of the equator. 
• By comparison, Earth’s natural wonder, the Grand Canyon, is only 446 km long.
• It is one of the larger canyons in the solar system.
• It spans about 20 percent of the entire circumference of Mars. 
• Individual canyons are typically 200 km across and have walls 2–5 km high.
• At the centre of the system, several canyons merge to form a depression 600 km across and 9 km deep.
• The canyon system contains a number of different features that give clues to its formation. 
  • Some of the canyon walls appear to be fault scarps that formed as a result of crustal movement along faults radiating from the Tharsis rise, an enormous volcanic bulge to the northwest. 
  • Erosion, however, has also played a significant role in canyon formation, as indicated by deep gullies cut in the walls.
  • In places, the canyons contain thick sedimentary sequences that may have been deposited in lakes that formerly occupied the canyons. 
  • These lakes later may have drained catastrophically to the east, where there is evidence of large floods.

News: TH

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