• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Gaze Into The Colossal Craters Of Mars And They Will Stare Icily Back

May 21, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

Freshly released images show a bird’s eye view of the colossal craters that scar the surface of Mars. Not only do they make for a pretty sight, but the images provide clues about whether life has ever lived on our closest planetary neighbor.

The images were captured by the Trace Gas Orbiter of ExoMars, an astrobiology program of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Russian space agency (Roscosmos). 

Advertisement

The first image (above) shows a crater in Utopia Planitia, the largest confirmed impact basin in the Solar System with a diameter of roughly 3,300 kilometers (2,050 miles) – that’s around the distance from Las Vegas to Washington DC.

Taken from about 400 kilometers (248 miles) above the surface, the image suggests the crater was formed by an asteroid collision at a time when this region was home to water ice. The smooth shape of the crater is further evidence that the region once held water ice. 

An interesting bunch of craters in Ganges Chasma, Mars.

Splat! An interesting bunch of craters in Ganges Chasma, Mars.

Image credit: ESA/TGO/CaSSIS

On Earth, the presence of water is a good indication there is life present. While it’s not yet certain this “rule” applies to other planets, evidence of Martian water raises the possibility that the Red Planet once harbored life. 

The second image (above) shows a scattering of craters near the equator of Mars in a deep canyon known as the Ganges Chasma. 

Advertisement

Be aware that this is a false color image – the Red Planet hasn’t suddenly started feeling blue. The color filters were added so scientists can highlight mineralogical or geologic differences on Mars’s surface that are hard to distinguish with the naked eye.

The two larger craters measure 4 kilometers (2.4 miles) and 1.2 kilometers (0.7 miles) in diameter.  Once again, the splatter shape of the large crater suggests that the surface was not completely dry at the time of impact.

An ancient crater on the surface of Mars.

This giant crater is an ancient one.

Image credit: ESA/TGO/CaSSIS

Lastly, ESA unveiled a final image (above) of an ancient crater in the southern highlands of Mars. Located in the Tyrrhena Terra region, the 15-kilometer (9.3-mile) wide crater is relatively old. 

Unlike younger craters that have a sharp and defined rim, this giant crater has been battered by millennia of erosion and has since been filled with sediment. Smaller craters dotted within the larger cater also indicate this feature has been here for a very, very long time. 

Advertisement

What it lacks in life, Mars makes up for in geology. The Red Planet may only be around half the size of planet Earth, but it’s home to some truly massive geological features, including some of the largest known impact craters. Mars is also home to volcanoes that are far larger than those on Earth, including some of the largest known volcanoes in the Solar System. 

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Lithuania to fence first 110 km of Belarus border by April
  2. China’s ICBC to restrict some forex and commodities trading
  3. Potential New Treatment For Alcohol Use Disorder Identified By Scientists
  4. Why Is Earth’s Inner Core Solid When It’s Hotter Than The Sun’s Surface?

Source Link: Gaze Into The Colossal Craters Of Mars And They Will Stare Icily Back

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Unethical Experiments: When Scientists Really Should Have Stopped What They Were Doing Immediately
  • The First Humans Were Hunted By Leopards And Weren’t The Apex Predators We Thought They Were
  • Earth’s Passage Through The Galaxy Might Be Written In Its Rocks
  • What Is An Einstein Cross – And Why Is The Latest One Such A Unique Find?
  • If We Found Life On Mars, What Would That Mean For The Fermi Paradox And The Great Filter?
  • The Longest Living Mammals Are Giants That Live Up To 200 Years In The Icy Arctic
  • Entirely New Virus Detected In Bat Urine, And It’s Only The 4th Of Its Kind Ever Isolated
  • The First Ever Full Asteroid History: From Its Doomed Discovery To Collecting Its Meteorites
  • World’s Oldest Pachycephalosaur Fossil Pushes Back These Dinosaurs’ Emergence By 15 Million Years
  • The Hole In The Ozone Layer Is Healing And On Track For Full Recovery In The 21st Century, Thanks To Science
  • First Sweet Potato Genome Reveals They’re Hybrids With A Puzzling Past And 6 Sets Of Chromosomes
  • Why Is The Top Of Canada So Sparsely Populated? Meet The “Canadian Shield”
  • Humans Are In The Middle Of “A Great Evolutionary Transition”, New Paper Claims
  • Why Do Some Toilets Have Two Flush Buttons?
  • 130-Year-Old Butter Additive Discovered In Danish Basement Contains Bacteria From The 1890s
  • Prehistoric Humans Made Necklaces From Marine Mollusk Fossils 20,000 Years Ago
  • Zond 5: In 1968 Two Soviet Steppe Tortoises Beat Humans To Orbiting Around The Moon
  • Why Cats Adapted This Defense Mechanism From Snakes
  • Mother Orca Seen Carrying Dead Calf Once Again On Washington Coast
  • A Busy Spider Season Is Brewing: Why This Fall Could See A Boom Of Arachnid Activity
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version