Categories: esaMars

Video: Fly Over a Weird Landscape on Mars in 3-D

This isn’t quite like Luke’s trench run in the Battle of Yavin, but it’s waaay more awesome in that this is real.

Go grab your red–green or red–blue 3-D glasses (you always have a pair right by your desk, right?) and enjoy this great flyover video from ESA showcasing some very interesting landforms on Mars that planetary geologists refer to as ‘chaotic terrain.’ There’s nothing quite like this on Earth, and scattered throughout a large area to both the west and east of Valles Marineris are hundreds of isolated mountains up to 2,000 meters high. “Seen from orbit, they form a bizarre, chaotic pattern,” say scientists from the Mars Express orbiter.

What created this weird landscape? Scientists think that during Mars’ early history, water in the form of ice was stored in cavities beneath the surface of the highlands; this was then heated and thawed out. It was then placed under so much pressure that it escaped to the surface with great force through fissures and fault zones. As it flowed out, the water eroded the terrain and gradually left behind the striking landscape visible today. Another factor supporting this theory is that many of the chaotic terrains on Mars are located at the head of large outflow channels, through which enormous quantities of water flowed out of the highlands towards the northern lowlands.

The data used to generate the images and the simulated flyover were acquired with the High Resolution Stereo Camera on ESA’s Mars Express orbiter.

See more imagery and details here.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy has been with Universe Today since 2004, and has published over 6,000 articles on space exploration, astronomy, science and technology. She is the author of two books: "Eight Years to the Moon: the History of the Apollo Missions," (2019) which shares the stories of 60 engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make landing on the Moon possible; and "Incredible Stories from Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos" (2016) tells the stories of those who work on NASA's robotic missions to explore the Solar System and beyond. Follow Nancy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Nancy_A and and Instagram at and https://www.instagram.com/nancyatkinson_ut/

Recent Posts

NASA is Developing Solutions for Lunar Housekeeping’s Biggest Problem: Dust!

Through the Artemis Program, NASA will send the first astronauts to the Moon since the…

11 hours ago

Where’s the Most Promising Place to Find Martian Life?

New research suggests that our best hopes for finding existing life on Mars isn’t on…

12 hours ago

Can Entangled Particles Communicate Faster than Light?

Entanglement is perhaps one of the most confusing aspects of quantum mechanics. On its surface,…

1 day ago

IceCube Just Spent 10 Years Searching for Dark Matter

Neutrinos are tricky little blighters that are hard to observe. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory in…

2 days ago

Star Devouring Black Hole Spotted by Astronomers

A team of astronomers have detected a surprisingly fast and bright burst of energy from…

2 days ago

What Makes Brown Dwarfs So Weird?

Meet the brown dwarf: bigger than a planet, and smaller than a star. A category…

2 days ago