Mars is a world that is shaped by dramatic landscapes and a few regions that show this better than Acheron Fossae, a spectacular network of deep cracks and valleys that cut the surface of the red planet like old scars. The latest pictures from the Mars Express spaceship of the European Space Agency show the western edge of this fascinating geological formation and offer new insights into the violent past of Mars and the changing climate.
Picture of Mars, which was taken from the Hubble World Space Telescope between April 27 and May 6, 1999 when Mars was 87 million kilometers from Earth (Credit: NASA/ESA)
Acheron Fosae is an extensive system of deep, faulty cracks (known as fosae) with alternating pieces made of elevated and lowered soil, a pattern called the geologist “Horst and Graben”. Imagine a broken chocolate clip in which some pieces were pushed up, while others fall and a jagged landscape of combing and valleys that can be hundreds of kilometers long and several kilometers deep.
These functions were not created overnight. Such a pattern was probably declined for over 3.7 billion years when Mars was geologically the most active, as a hot material under the Mars crust rose. As a melted rock of deep, pressed up within the mares, it stretched the surface of the planet and created the deep valleys that we see today.
Image by Acheron Fosae in the Tharsis region on Mars (loan: NASA)
What makes aceron fossae particularly fascinating is not only as it has formed, but also how it changes. The valley floors are relatively smooth and marked by gentle weaving of lines that are reminiscent of a flowing river. Instead of water, these valleys were filled by a slow, viscous river of zealous rocks, similar to the rock glaciers that we see here on Earth.
These Marsfein glaciers behave like geological capsules and preserve evidence of the Marsian climate history. Fels glaciers are very sensitive to changes in the climate and therefore act as good markings for how the surroundings of a planet have changed over time. Here they indicate that this region of Mars alternating periods with cool and warm, freeze and thaw.
The key to understanding this climate fluctuations lies in Mars' unstable inclination. In contrast to Earth, which maintains a relatively constant inclination thanks to the stabilizing influence of the moon, the Mars shakes dramatically over time. Mars's inclination has swung between 15 and 45 degrees in the past 10 million years, while the earth has varied between 22 and 24.5 degrees.
These variations, known as the Milankovitch cycles, create alternating ice age on Mars and warm periods. In the event of extreme tendencies, ice can sneak close to the planet's equator before recurring on his poles in warmer periods.
The pictures also show how erosion has changed the landscape for millions of years. To the right of the main fossae, the deep cracks switch to flat, dark lowland levels with a stripes raised hills and rocky hills in between. These are the remains of a once continuous rock layer, which has been slowly worn out by ice and rock flows over time and rounded hills, the buttons and flat plateaus called Mesas.
This erosion process creates a characteristic transition that is visible in the topographical data from the deep red and yellow tones of higher soil, which gradually melts into light and darker blue, which indicates lower increases. It is like watching a mountain area slowly dissolved into a simple resolution during the geological period.
Illustration of Esas Mars Express spaceship (loan: NASA/JPL)
These remarkable findings are friendly with the friendly approval of Esas Mars Express room vehicle, which has been captured and explored by Mars landscapes since 2003. With its high -resolution stereo camera, the orbiter has shown the surface of the planet in unprecedented details, color and three dimensions over two decades.
As we continue to examine Mars, characteristics such as Acheron Fosae serve as natural laboratories to understand planetary geology and climate development. They remind us that planets are dynamic systems and constantly change over geological time. For future Mars missions, both robots and humans, the understanding of these processes for navigation, the use of resources and the safe research of our planetary neighbor will be of crucial importance.
Source: When Mars Ground falls apart