WATCH | STUNNING VISUALISATION OF MARS’ GIGANTIC ‘LABYRINTH OF NIGHT’

Mon 16 October 2023:

The European Space Agency has released a spectacular new footage that depicts the enormity of Mars’ massive 2,500-mile (4,023.36-kilometer) long ‘Labyrinth of Night’ – a 1190-kilometer-long valley (approximately the length of Italy).

The footage depicts a flyover of Mars Express’ High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). It was generated by constructing an image mosaic across eight orbits.

The valley called Noctis Labyrinthus or the Labyrinth of Night, is nestled between the colossal Martian Valles Marineris — the red planet’s equivalent of Earth’s Grand Canyon, and the tallest volcano in the Solar System — located in the Tharsis region.

Mars Express

ESA mission Mars Express has been orbiting the barren planet for 20 years — since 2003. The mission objectives include mapping Mars’ surface, and its minerals, a study of the tenuous atmosphere, probing what lies beneath the red planet’s crust and exploring how various phenomena interact in the Martian environment.

Martian terrain

The video, as per a statement by the European Space Agency, presents a “perspective view down and across this fascinating landscape, showing distinctive ‘graben’—parts of the crust that have subsided in relation to their surroundings.”

The breathtaking Mars terrain footage from ESA can be viewed here:

🛰🔴 Fly across Mars’s ‘labyrinth of night’ with us and Mars Express.

Nestled between the colossal martian ‘Grand Canyon’ and the tallest volcanoes in the Solar System lies Noctis Labyrinthus – a vast system of deep and steep valleys that stretches out for roughly 1190 km, the… pic.twitter.com/SdS4gu174E

— ESA (@esa) October 11, 2023

A graben, as per the space agency, is a type of crust that forms when a block of the planet’s crust drops between two faults, due to extension, or pulling, of the crust.

The intense volcanism in the nearby Tharsis region is to blame for the formation of these features. ESA explains that due to volcanism, large areas of the Martian crust arch upwards and “become stretched and tectonically stressed, leading to it thinning out, faulting and subsiding.”

The high plateaus visible in the video represent the original surface level of the planet, which, due to volcanic activity, underwent changes. These valleys, as per ESA estimates, are up to 30 kilometres wide and six metres deep.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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