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Lunae Planum - Mars Express
Mars Express HRSC image centered over Lunae Planum, a high-altitude plain northeast of Valles Marineris. This region has deep canyons carved out by large floods. These floods were probably created by the sudden melt of large reservoirs of subsurface ice. The release of this water caused the overlying materials to collapse, creating a jagged landscape appropriately called chaos terrain. These landscapes can be seen in the canyons at top right and center.
The outflow channels drain into the lowlands of Chryse Planitia. The channels carved by these floods terminate at remarkably similar elevations (within 200 m of each other), despite being separated by up to 2500 km. This has led some Martian geologists to infer the presence of an ancient ocean that once filled the planet's northern lowlands.
This natural color image was acquired by the Mars Express HRSC instrument during the spacecraft's 19,558th orbit of Mars, June 19, 2019.
Image Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/J. Cowart, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Lunae Planum - Mars Express
Mars Express HRSC image centered over Lunae Planum, a high-altitude plain northeast of Valles Marineris. This region has deep canyons carved out by large floods. These floods were probably created by the sudden melt of large reservoirs of subsurface ice. The release of this water caused the overlying materials to collapse, creating a jagged landscape appropriately called chaos terrain. These landscapes can be seen in the canyons at top right and center.
The outflow channels drain into the lowlands of Chryse Planitia. The channels carved by these floods terminate at remarkably similar elevations (within 200 m of each other), despite being separated by up to 2500 km. This has led some Martian geologists to infer the presence of an ancient ocean that once filled the planet's northern lowlands.
This natural color image was acquired by the Mars Express HRSC instrument during the spacecraft's 19,558th orbit of Mars, June 19, 2019.
Image Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/J. Cowart, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO