The Grand Canyon in Arizona may be awesome, but it’s just a scratch compared to the massive Valles Marineris Gorge on Mars.
By cutting the Mars equator, it would reach about 200 miles from New York City if placed in the United States, according to NASA. The gorge floor drops 11 km into the surrounding plains. It is as deep as some of the deepest parts of the Earth’s ocean.
It is the largest gap in the solar system, and new images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reveal details of its colossal size.
The photos were taken using the HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment), the most powerful camera ever sent to another planet. It is one of six instruments aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the University of Arizona said.
Despite some breathtaking images of Valles Marineris, scientists according to LiveScience are still not sure how the giant gorge complex formed.
“Unlike the Earth’s Grand Canyon, Valles Marineris was probably not carved out by billions of years of stormwater; the Red Planet is too hot and dry to ever accommodate a river large enough to cut through the crust,” said LiveScience.
A large part of the gorge probably erupted billions of years ago, the European Space Agency said when a nearby group of volcanoes, known as the Tharsis region, first erupted from the Martian soil.
“While the Tharsis hill swelled with magma during the first billion years of the planet, the surrounding crust was stretched, torn apart and eventually collapsed into the giant bowls of Valles Marineris,” the space agency said.
The Tharsis hill is home to Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the solar system, reports the Science Times.
Further analysis of high-resolution photos like these will help solve the mysterious origin of the solar system’s most beautiful gorge, according to WordsSideKick.com.
This article originally appeared in the US today: Mars Gorge is larger than Grand Canyon, the largest in the solar system: NASA