This typical cliff on Mars just happens to match the walls of the Grand Canyon
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 23, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
The label the science team gave this image, “remnant fan”, suggests the focus of research here is the fingerlike ridges on the floor of the canyon, emanating out from the cliff. These appear to be the remains of an ancient mass-wasting event, similar to an avalanche but different in that instead of it being a pile of surface material falling down the cliff, the cliff itself breaks free and slumps downward. In this case the event was so long ago that most of the slumped material has eroded away, leaving only those ridges, likely resistant to erosion because of the impact of the material from above.
If you look at the top of cliff, you can see evidence that another mass wasting event is pending. Note how the plateau floor near the cliff has dropped about 100 feet. This drop suggests that this part of the cliff has started to slump and break away from the plateau.
The white dot on the overview map to the right marks the location, on the north wall of Kasei Valles’s southern channel. Kasei Valles is believed by scientists to have formed from a catastrophic flood that occurred sometime in the ancient past, likely several billion years ago. One theory posits that flood occurred when that ice dam broke, releasing in one burst the water in that lake.
The black lava flow is thought to have taken place afterward, about 150 to 200 million years ago, with the lava following the channel downhill and out into lowland plains to the east, traveling the distance of about 1,000 miles at speeds of 10 to 45 miles per hour.
This cliff is about 4,700 feet high, making it very comparable in height to the south rim of the Grand Canyon at the Bright Angel trailhead, the place where almost all tourists go. On Earth, the steep walls of the Grand Canyon however are generally very rare, which is why it is such a popular tourist spot. The Earth’s thick atmosphere and active weather helps smooth out the terrain, so that such extreme geological features generally don’t survive for long.
On Mars however the atmosphere is very thin, and there really is almost no weather of significance. The wind can shape things, but a scale that is infinitesimal compared to Earth’s. Thus a cliff such as this is actually quite typical. In Kasei this cliff runs for hundreds of miles. And Kasei is only one of many such canyons found on Mars, with a large number several times deeper and more dramatic. Nor does that include the red planet’s many craters, the larger of which often have rims equally as deep.
While making Mars livable for life will be one of the greatest challenges humans ever attempt, the benefits of being able to live in such a wonderfully dramatic landscape will I think make the work worthwhile for those who go and do it.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 23, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
The label the science team gave this image, “remnant fan”, suggests the focus of research here is the fingerlike ridges on the floor of the canyon, emanating out from the cliff. These appear to be the remains of an ancient mass-wasting event, similar to an avalanche but different in that instead of it being a pile of surface material falling down the cliff, the cliff itself breaks free and slumps downward. In this case the event was so long ago that most of the slumped material has eroded away, leaving only those ridges, likely resistant to erosion because of the impact of the material from above.
If you look at the top of cliff, you can see evidence that another mass wasting event is pending. Note how the plateau floor near the cliff has dropped about 100 feet. This drop suggests that this part of the cliff has started to slump and break away from the plateau.
The white dot on the overview map to the right marks the location, on the north wall of Kasei Valles’s southern channel. Kasei Valles is believed by scientists to have formed from a catastrophic flood that occurred sometime in the ancient past, likely several billion years ago. One theory posits that flood occurred when that ice dam broke, releasing in one burst the water in that lake.
The black lava flow is thought to have taken place afterward, about 150 to 200 million years ago, with the lava following the channel downhill and out into lowland plains to the east, traveling the distance of about 1,000 miles at speeds of 10 to 45 miles per hour.
This cliff is about 4,700 feet high, making it very comparable in height to the south rim of the Grand Canyon at the Bright Angel trailhead, the place where almost all tourists go. On Earth, the steep walls of the Grand Canyon however are generally very rare, which is why it is such a popular tourist spot. The Earth’s thick atmosphere and active weather helps smooth out the terrain, so that such extreme geological features generally don’t survive for long.
On Mars however the atmosphere is very thin, and there really is almost no weather of significance. The wind can shape things, but a scale that is infinitesimal compared to Earth’s. Thus a cliff such as this is actually quite typical. In Kasei this cliff runs for hundreds of miles. And Kasei is only one of many such canyons found on Mars, with a large number several times deeper and more dramatic. Nor does that include the red planet’s many craters, the larger of which often have rims equally as deep.
While making Mars livable for life will be one of the greatest challenges humans ever attempt, the benefits of being able to live in such a wonderfully dramatic landscape will I think make the work worthwhile for those who go and do it.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News