The hero of a contemporary story, returning to Earth from a trip to Mars, is extremely disappointed to describe his impressions, noting that the only interesting attraction on the planet is Elon Musk’s mausoleum. To a certain extent, he can be understood because visually, the Red Planet does not look like Earth at all. But the idea of Mars as a boring desert planet is also not true.
Mars has many impressive landscape formations, many of which are many times larger than their Earthly counterparts, and some of which simply have no analogues in the entire Solar System. In this article, we will tell you about the main tourist attractions of Mars.
Valles Marineris
When the Mariner 9 spacecraft made the first global map of the surface of Mars in 1971, the attention of experts was immediately drawn to an amazing formation that was later named in its honor. We are talking about the Valles Marineris.
The Valles Marineris is the largest canyon system in the entire Solar System. It is 4,500 km long – a quarter of the planet’s circumference! Some of the canyons are 200 km wide and 11 km deep, so Mount Everest could easily hide at their bottom.
These figures are even more staggering if we compare the Valles Marineris with the famous Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. The latter is 450 km long, 29 km wide, and 1.7 km deep. That is, it does not look so big against the background of the Valles Marineris.
Mount Olympus
If any structure on Mars strikes the imagination of ordinary people more than the Valles Marineris, it is, of course, Mount Olympus. This is the name of the famous supervolcano, whose height from the base to the top is 26 km, which is almost three times higher than Mount Everest.
The diameter of the base of Olympus is 624 km, covering an area of almost 300 thousand km2. This is comparable to the area of Italy.
It’s hard to imagine what kind of view a traveler will see from the top of a megavolcano, but it’s undeniable that climbing Olympus would be the greatest achievement for any climber.
Tharsis
Olympus is not the only supervolcano on Mars. It is accompanied by three slightly smaller, but still gigantic by Earth’s standards, mountains that line up in a kind of chain on the Martian surface. These are Ascraeus Mons (18 km), Pavonis Mons (14 km), and Arsia Mons (19 km).
All these supervolcanoes are part of Tharsis. Its total area is 30 million km2, which is comparable to the size of Africa. According to scientists, this region played a key role in the history of the Red Planet. The mass of volcanic sediments in Tharsis is so large that at some point it could even cause a shift in the axis of rotation of Mars.
The largest waterfall in the Solar System
Once upon a time, there were permanent lakes on Mars and, most likely, even an ocean in the northern hemisphere. There were also waterfalls on the planet.
The largest of them was located in Echus Chasma, which is 100 km long and 10 km wide. According to scientists, for about 3.7 billion years, water flowed through its bottom, which then fell from a height of 4 km. By the way, this is four times the height of the famous Angel Falls.
Polar caps
Recently, polar cruises to the shores of Greenland or Antarctica have become quite popular on Earth. Something similar could be organized on Mars, as the planet is famous for its polar caps.
However, unlike the Earth, the polar caps of Mars have a completely different structure. At the top is a layer of carbon dioxide (dry ice) that freezes out of the atmosphere during winter, while water ice is located below the surface in the form of a kind of “sandwich” consisting of alternating layers of ice and compressed dust.
With the onset of spring, the dry ice begins to evaporate, resulting in quite spectacular geyser-like emissions.
Noctis Labyrinthus
Noctis Labyrinthus is an extremely picturesque and unique place. It stretches for 1190 km, which is about the same distance as from Kyiv to Berlin. The labyrinth is filled with colossal landslides, huge dunes blown by the winds, and many intersecting canyons up to 30 km wide and 6 km deep.
In the morning, a fog of water ice crystals rises over the Noctis Labyrinthus. The exact reason for this is unknown. Perhaps the reason is that the western slopes of the canyons serve as water vapor traps in the evening (as the coldest places at this time of day), and when they warm up in the morning, they give off this vapor. Rising and cooling, it then condenses into ice crystals.
Blue sunset
In conclusion, it’s worth mentioning one more interesting thing about Mars that has nothing to do with its topography. We are talking about the sky, which is radically different from the Earth’s.
There are auroras on Mars. Since the planet has no global magnetic field, they are not tied to its poles and can occur at any latitude.
To tell the truth, there is no consensus among astronomers as to whether they can be seen with the naked eye or not. However, it is believed that if the human eye can see them, they will acquire a very unusual blue color (the Earth’s aurorae are mostly red and green).
Most likely, we will know the final answer to the question of whether it is possible to see the aurora borealis on Mars only when the first humans arrive there.
