14 DAY TRIAL // The European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter has recently snapped a new series of photos of the planet's surface, revealing scarred terrain stretching for large distances, as well as several impact craters, most likely caused by asteroids that struck the planet in the past. An area roughly the size of Manhattan was photographed, stretching between the Kasei Valles and Sacra Fossae regions of Mars. The images were taken with the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) instrument aboard Mars Express, Space reports.
Kasei Valles is one of the largest outflow channels that have been photographed on Mars thus far. It spans a distance of about 1,900 miles (3,000 km), connecting the northern Chryse Planitia basin to the southern Echus Chasma. The new images cover a region on the eastern margin of Kasei, and also include the western margin of the Lunae Planum plateau, and the neighboring Sacra Fossae. The latter structure is also very large, spanning more than 600 miles (1,000 km). Planetary scientists believe it may be a fault system that is several hundred meters deep.
To the top of the image, a huge impact crater is clearly visible. The formation is estimated to be about 22 miles (35 kilometers) in diameter, and shows massive signs of erosion, hinting at the fact that it was formed many years ago. Experts believe that water flows may have been responsible for causing the erosion, and have identified the Echus Chasma formation, some 530 miles (850 kilometers) away, as the main probable source of the flow.
Experts believe that the region depicted in these images has been over the years subjected to massive tectonic stress, which would explain its “wrinkles.” Additionally, a process known as “subrosion” may have also been at work. The phenomenon manifests itself by simply eroding the rocks on the surface and dissolving them, which in turn causes the trench-like scars that Mars Express picked up. The activity stopped billions of years ago and now the area is a desolate, barren wasteland.