United space in Europe
Science & Exploration

Mawrth Vallis martian mosaic

26/09/2016 9264 views 130 likes 365738 ID
  • HI-RES JPG [4.51 MB]

Thank you for liking

You have already liked this page, you can only like it once!

Sculpted by ancient water flowing on the surface, Mawrth Vallis is one of the most remarkable outflow channels on Mars. The valley, once a potentially habitable place, is one of the main features of a region at the boundary between the southern highlands and the northern lowlands.

Mawrth Vallis takes centre stage in this image, a bird’s eye view of a 330 000 sq km area surrounding the valley. With a length of 600 km and a depth of up to 2 km, it is one of the biggest valleys on Mars. Huge amounts of water once passed through it, from a higher elevation region, part of which is shown in the lower right of the image, into the northern plains, in the top left.

Among the remarkable features are the large exposures of light-toned phyllosilicates (weathered clay minerals) that lie along its course. Phyllosilicates on Mars are evidence of the past presence of liquid water and point to the possibility that habitable environments could have existed on the planet up until 3.6 billion years ago.

A dark cap rock, remains of ancient volcanic ash, covers many of the clays and could have protected traces of ancient microbes in the rocks from radiation and erosion. This makes Mawrth Vallis one of the most interesting regions for geologists and astrobiologists alike. It is one of the candidate landing sites for ExoMars 2020, a joint mission between ESA and Russia, with the primary goal of finding out if life once existed on Mars.

The name comes from the Welsh word for Mars (“Mawrth”) and the Latin for valley (“Vallis”). This mosaic was created using nine individual images taken by the high-resolution stereo camera on ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, which has been orbiting Mars since late 2003. It is one of a set of images of this region previously published on 7 July 2016 on the DLR website and the homepage of the Freie Universität Berlin. 

  • ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
  • Space Science
  • Mars Express
  • Space Science image of the week
Science & Exploration

Fly over Mawrth Vallis

Video 00:02:36 25481 views 131 likes
Mawrth Vallis
Science & Exploration

Mawrth Vallis

Image 1644 views 10 likes
Mawrth Vallis perspective view
Science & Exploration

Mawrth Vallis perspective view

Image 720 views 2 likes
Mawrth Vallis topography
Science & Exploration

Mawrth Vallis topography

Image 489 views 0 likes
Stunning image of Rosetta above Mars taken by the Philae lander camera
Enabling & Support

Stunning image of Rosetta above Mars taken by the Ph…

Image 9358 views 57 likes