{"id":22926,"date":"2021-01-09T00:56:08","date_gmt":"2021-01-08T16:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/new-image-of-mars-valles-marineris-reveals-its-enormous-scale\/"},"modified":"2021-01-09T00:56:08","modified_gmt":"2021-01-08T16:56:08","slug":"new-image-of-mars-valles-marineris-reveals-its-enormous-scale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/new-image-of-mars-valles-marineris-reveals-its-enormous-scale\/","title":{"rendered":"New image of Mars\u2019 Valles Marineris reveals its enormous scale"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Valles Marineris, also known as Mariner Valley, is a vast, expansive canyon covering a quarter of Mars\u2019 equator. The 2,500-mile-long canyon is so large that it has been deemed the largest canyon in our entire solar system.<\/p>\n

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A new photo captured by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in late December shows just how beautiful and massive the canyon truly is. The photo is of Tithonium Chasma, part of Valles Marineris. It shows the canyon and diagonal lines of sediment that may reveal cycles of ice freezing and melting.<\/p>\n

Scientists aren\u2019t only taking photos of Valles Marineris because of its size; it\u2019s also because we still aren\u2019t exactly sure how it formed. Unlike the Grand Canyon on Earth that was developed over billions of years by large amounts of rushing water, Mars was always too hot and dry to accommodate that.<\/p>\n

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The current thinking is that most of the canyon was likely formed via a super-group of volcanoes called the Tharsis region. Magma underneath these large volcanoes could have stretched and cracked Mars\u2019 crust. This, followed by magma flows, small rivers, and landslides over eons of time, definitely could have formed what we call the largest canyon in our solar system.<\/p>\n

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