Tithonium Chasma is a great cannon. With an impressive length of 810 kilometers (503 miles), it is a large part of Valles Marineris, the largest cannon system we know of in the entire Solar System.
This close-up image of the chasma was taken in 2013 by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and appeared as the HiRISE image of the day.
The image shows about a kilometer (0.6 miles) of land on Mars with winding hills and valleys, but as you can see in the other images, when you start to shrink the image, this is just a small section of a giant set. .
(NASA / JPL / UArizona)
But how did he get there? The Grand Canyon of the Earth, which is five times shallower and ten times shorter than the Valles Marineris, was sculpted by the Colorado River.
But scientists aren’t sure what would have formed the 8 to 10-kilometer (5 to 6.2-mile) deep canyon of the Marineris Valleys and Tithonium Chasma, so they’ve been taking pictures to try to figure it out.
We know that the inclination of the axis of Mars (called obliquity) is not as stable as that of the Earth, which goes well over 60 degrees to less than 10 in the ancient past.
An uncropped and colorless version of the image above. (NASA / JPL / UArizona)
“It is possible, though not proven, that greater obliquity has led to the partial melting of some water gels from Mars,” HiRISE spokesman Edwin Kite wrote in 2014.
“Our best chance to understand this is to find piles of ice, dust, silt or sand that have accumulated over many cycles of oblique changes.”
The image of Tithonium Chasma above shows these findings. The sediment layers (those dark, light streaks that run diagonally through the center of the image) are relatively uniform, possibly showing the gradual accumulation of sediment over many long cycles of this axial tilt change.
A map showing the location in the Valles Marineris. (NASA / JPL / UArizona)
Even seven years after this photo was taken, we are still not sure what the Valles Marineris created. Some researchers suspect that a large tectonic “crack” may have split the surface of Mars, then be enhanced by lava flow, or potentially by water if the planet’s axial tilt were correct.
But really, while these images are scientifically interesting to astronomers, they are also wonderful.
You really can’t underestimate the amazing climbing of these peaks and troughs, which are captured by a spacecraft 264 kilometers from the planet’s surface.
You can see even more images of the Valles Marineris here.