Latest Chasma Stories

Geologists at the University of Washington found that a previously unseen landform on Mars could help provide a window into the geological history of the Red Planet. The "periodic bedrock ridges", or PBRs, look like sand dunes, but the scientists say that they are actually made from wind erosion of bedrock. "These bedforms look for all the world like sand dunes but they are carved into hard rock by wind," David Montgomery, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences, said in a press...

In space, astronauts learn to live and work in three dimensions. Now you can experience space with an extra dimension with ESA’s collection of 3D images. Over half a million viewers have already seen ESA’s world-first 3D transmissions from space on our 3D YouTube channel. More than 150 images are now available in 3D in our Flickr gallery. Prepare for liftoff from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana or the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Imagine floating in the International...

Almost 40 years ago, NASA's Mariner 9 spacecraft relayed to Earth the first video images of Mars' northern polar ice cap, revealing a strange pattern of spiral swirls that has puzzled scientists ever since. Using new data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), researchers have finally uncovered the secrets of the troughs that snake through the ice cap like a spiraled maze. Jack Holt of the University of Texas and his graduate student Isaac Smith used radar data from MRO's Shallow...

PASADENA, Calif., May 26 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Data from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) have helped scientists solve a pair of mysteries dating back four decades and provided new information about climate change on the Red Planet. (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The Shallow Radar, or SHARAD, instrument aboard MRO revealed subsurface geology allowing scientists to reconstruct the formation of a large chasm and a series of spiral troughs on the...

Scientists have reconstructed the formation of two curious features in the northern ice cap of Mars"”a chasm larger than the Grand Canyon and a series of spiral troughs"”solving a pair of mysteries dating back four decades while finding new evidence of climate change on Mars.In a pair of papers to be published in the journal Nature on May 27, Jack Holt and Isaac Smith of The University of Texas at Austin's Institute for Geophysics and their colleagues describe how they used radar data...

ESA -- These images, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA's Mars Express spacecraft, show Coprates Chasma, a major trough in the Valles Marineris canyon system.The HRSC obtained these images during orbit 449 with a ground resolution of approximately 48 metres per pixel. The scenes show the region containing the sections of Coprates Chasma and Coprates Catena, over an area centred at about 13.5º South and 300º East, roughly in the centre of the Valles Marineris...