Explanation:
The largest canyon in the
Solar System cuts a wide swath across the face of
Mars.
Named Valles Marineris, the grand valley extends
over 3,000 kilometers long, spans as much as
600 kilometers across,
and delves as much as 8 kilometers deep.
By comparison, the
Earth's Grand Canyon
in Arizona, USA is 800 kilometers long, 30 kilometers across,
and 1.8 kilometers deep.
The origin of the Valles Marineris remains unknown, although a leading hypothesis holds that it started as a
crack billions of years ago as the
planet cooled.
Recently,
several geologic processes have been identified in
the canyon.
The above mosaic was
created from over 100 images of
Mars taken by
Viking Orbiters in the 1970s.
