Latest Tharsis Stories

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online One of the most awe-inspiring sights on the planet Earth is the Grand Canyon. The Colorado River has cut through 2 billion years of geologic history, carving out a canyon that is 277 miles long and up to 18 miles wide. However, next to Valles Marineris on Mars, the Grand Canyon is a mere scratch in the ground. Valles Marineris stretches over 4000 kilometers in length and is 200 kilometers wide, with a maximum depth of 10 kilometers....

Lee Rannals for RedOrbit.com Mars Express has helped to unveil volcanic history of the Red Planet, providing more insight as to what lies underneath our celestial neighbor. The spacecraft has been floating above Mars, mapping out the planet, for five years, during which it has helped researchers find that lava grew denser over time, and that the thickness of the planet's rigid outer layers varies across the Tharsis region. The measurements were taken while Mars Express was orbiting...

Flowing lava can carve or build paths very much like the riverbeds and canyons etched by water, and this probably explains at least one of the meandering channels on the surface of Mars. These results were presented on March 4, 2010 at the 41st Lunar and Planetary Science Conference by Jacob Bleacher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Whether channels on Mars were formed by water or by lava has been debated for years, and the outcome is thought to influence the likelihood...

The Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera imaged a region close to Ma'adim Vallis, one of the largest canyons on Mars, finding craters, lava flows and tectonic features.After Valles Marineris, Ma'adim Vallis is one of the largest canyons on Mars. The region, lying south-east of Ma'adim Vallis, was imaged on 24 December 2008. The pictures are centered at about 29°S and 182°E and have a ground resolution of 15 m/pixel.Ma'adim Vallis is located between the volcanic region of Tharsis,...

Picture a ball. It's an ordinary ball in every way except that it is roughly 4,300 miles in diameter and is moving through the cold of space some 35 million miles from Earth, and hurtling around the sun in just less than two Earth years. This is Mars.After a first glance at the Martian surface, one may quickly notice two striking global-scale features. The first is the three-mile elevation difference between the northern lowlands and southern highlands, known as the Crustal Dichotomy, which...

The High Resolution Stereo Camera on board ESA's Mars Express imaged the Eumenides Dorsum mountains on the Red Planet.Eumenides Dorsum lies at approximately 2° south and 206° east. The images, taken on 26 December 2007, have a ground resolution of about 13 m/pixel. They cover an area of about 12 000 square km.The mountains are located to the west of the Tharsis Region, and form part of the Medusae-Fossae Region, which is most likely covered by a blanket of volcanic ash.The region...

Is Mars dead, or is it only sleeping? The surface of Mars is completely hostile to life as we know it. Martian deserts are blasted by radiation from the sun and space. The air is so thin, cold, and dry, if liquid water were present on the surface, it would freeze and boil at the same time. But there is evidence, like vast, dried up riverbeds, that Mars once was a warm and wet world that could have supported life. Are the best times over, at least for life, on Mars? New research raises the...

WASHINGTON -- Mysterious debris fields found far from the poles on Mars were made by glaciers, possibly formed just like glaciers are on Earth -- by the buildup of snow, researchers said on Friday.The glaciers would have resembled those found on Earth in places such as Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa or the Andean peaks in South America, the researchers report in Friday's issue of the journal Science.They probably formed when Mars was tilted on its side five million years ago, Brown University...

ESA -- The spectacular features visible today on the surface of the Red Planet indicate the past existence of Martian glaciers, but where did the ice come from? An international team of scientists have produced sophisticated climate simulations suggesting that geologically recent glaciers at low latitudes (that is near the present-day equator) may have formed through atmospheric precipitation of water-ice particles. Moreover, the results of the simulations show for the first time that the...

WASHINGTON -- Since the time billions of years ago when Mars was formed, it has never been a spherically symmetric planet, nor is it composed of similar materials throughout, say scientists who have studied the planet. Since its formation, it has changed its shape, for example, through the development of the Tharsis bulge, an eight kilometer [five mile] high feature that covers one-sixth of the Martian surface, and through volcanic activity. As a result of these and other factors, its polar...