Small Pale Red Planet Issue 2 Phase 3.1

 

The Tharsis Region

MC-9

The Region covers the area from 90° to 135° East longitude and 0° to 30° north latitude on Mars and contains most of the Tharsis Rise. The plateau is about as high as Earth's Mount Everest and about as big in area as all of Europe. Tharsis contains a group of large volcanoes. Olympus Mons is the tallest.

Topographical Map of Tharsis Region

The Tharsis Region  contains a group of large volcanoes. Olympus Mons is the tallest. When you enter the Tharsis Region you enter volcano country.

Image of the Tharsis Region

Tharsis is a land of great volcanoes. Olympus Mons is one of the tallest known volcanoes in the Solar System; it is 100 times larger in area than any volcano on Earth. Ascraeus Mons and Pavonis Mons are at least 200 miles across and are over six miles above the plateau that they sit on—and, the plateau is three to four miles above the zero altitude of Mars.  Pavonis Mons, the middle in a line of three volcanoes, sits at just about dead center on the equator. Mons is a term used for a large raised feature. Tholus is about the same, but smaller. A Patera is flatter and like a volcano with a super large opening. Actually, a Patera is formed when the top of a volcano collapses because its magma chamber is empty.  Several volcanoes form a straight line in the Tharsis Uplift. Two major ones are in the Tharsis Region, they are the Ascraeus Mons and Pavonis Mons. It has been proposed that these are the result of plate motion, which on Earth makes volcanic arc islands.  We will start by exploring the biggest volcano of all the Olympus Mons since we left off at its basal scarp in the last Phase. 

Olympus Mons

Olympus Mons: (Latin for Mount Olympus) is a large shield volcano on the planet Mars. By one measure, it has a height of nearly 22 km (14 mi). This makes it the tallest mountain on any planet in the Solar System (and, after the 2011 discovery of Rheasilvia Mons on the proto-planet Vesta, the second largest mountain on any world known). It stands almost three times as tall as Mount Everest's height above sea level. Olympus Mons is the youngest of the large volcanoes on Mars, having formed during Mars's Amazonian Period. Astronomers had known Olympus Mons since the late 19th century as the albedo feature Nix Olympica (Latin for "Olympic Snow").   Its mountainous nature was suspected well before space probes confirmed its identity as a mountain. The volcano is located in Mars's western hemisphere at approximately  18.65°N 226.2°E, just off the northwestern edge of the Tharsis bulge. The western portion of the volcano lies in the Amazonis Region (MC-8) and the central and eastern portions in the adjoining Tharsis Region (MC-9).   A shield volcano is a type of volcano usually built almost entirely of fluid lava flows. They are named for their large size and low profile, resembling a warrior's shield. This is caused by the highly fluid lava they erupt, which travels farther than lava erupted from volcanoes that are more explosive. This results in the steady accumulation of broad sheets of lava, building up the shield volcano's distinctive form. Shield volcanoes contain low viscosity magma giving it flowing mafic lava.

Mons Olympus

As a shield volcano, Olympus Mons resembles in its morphology the large volcanoes making up the Hawaiian Islands. The edifice is about 600 kilometers (370 miles) wide. Because the mountain is so large, with complex structure at its edges, allocating a height to the structure is difficult. It stands 21 km (13 mi) above the Mars global datum, and its local relief, from the foot of the cliffs, which form its margin to the northwest to its peak, is nearly 22 km (14 mi) (a little over twice the height of Mauna Kea as measured from its base on the ocean floor). The total elevation change from the plains of Amazonis Planitia, over 1,000 km (620 mi) to the northwest, to the summit approaches 26 km (16 mi).The summit of the mountain has six nested calderas (collapse craters) forming an irregular depression 60 km (37 mi) × 80 km (50 mi) across and up to 3.2 km (2.0 mi) deep. The volcano's outer edge consists of an escarpment, or cliff, up to 8 km (5.0 mi) tall, a feature unique among the shield volcanoes of Mars. Olympus Mons covers an area approximately the size of Arizona.   Being a shield volcano, Olympus Mons has a very low profile. The average slope on the volcano's flanks is only 5°. Slopes are highest near the middle part of the flanks and grow shallower toward the base, giving the flanks a concave upward profile.

Pangboche Crater in the Infrared at the top of Mount Olympus.

Olympus Mons has two craters on its peak. Pangboche Crater is a very fresh, 11-kilometer (6.8 mile) diameter crater near the summit of Olympus Mons. Multiple lines of evidence indicate that Pangboche is geologically young.  Olympus Mons is the result of many thousands of highly fluid, basaltic lava flows that poured from volcanic vents over a long period of time. (The Hawaiian Islands exemplify similar shield volcanoes on a smaller scale – see Mauna Kea.) The extraordinary size of Olympus Mons is because Mars lacks mobile tectonic plates ( that is the current theory). Unlike on Earth, the crust of Mars remains fixed over a stationary hotspot, and a volcano can continue to discharge lava until it reaches an enormous height (same current theory).  However, this theory could be incorrect as it has been a long time since Mars has seen a volcanic eruption and there seems to be the possibility of plate movement in other areas of Mars. 

Rim of Pangboche Crater

Pangboche has a very distinct, sharp rim. Over time, crater rims degrade and blend into their surroundings. It has steep walls as indicated by the numerous boulders rolling down the walls. For boulders and material to dislodge from a slope because of gravity alone, slopes need to be rather steep (approximately 30 degrees).  The interior of the crater contains material that likely slumped off the walls during late stages of its formation. The north wall of the crater has material that has not slumped to the floor, instead forming a terrace. Also noteworthy is the abundance of small craters that surround, but do not occur within, Pangboche. These are mostly secondary craters that formed when ejecta from an impact hit the surface. If the small craters were primary craters (formed from an impacter from space), then they would be expected to be within Pangboche as well.

The second crater on Olympus Mons is the 15.6 km (9.7 mi)-diameter Karzok Crater (The two craters are notable for being two of several suspected source areas for shergottites, the most abundant class of Martian meteorites).  Roughly, three-quarters of all Martian meteorites can be classified as shergottites. They are named after the Shergotty meteorite, which fell at Shergotty, India in 1865. Shergottites are igneous rocks of mafic to ultramafic lithology. They fall into three main groups, the basaltic, olivine-phyric (such as the Tissint group found in Morocco in 2011) and lherzolitic shergottites, based on their crystal size and mineral content. They can be categorized alternatively into three or four groups based on their rare-earth element content. These two classification systems do not line up with each other, hinting at complex relationships between the various source rocks and magmas that the shergottites formed from.

NWA 6963, a Shergottite found in Morocco, September 2011.

Northeast of Olympus Mons is Cyane Sulci.  Northeast of that location is Cyane Fossae.

Cyane Fossae

Fossa (pl. fossae) is a term used in planetary geology to describe a long, narrow depression (trough) on the surface of an extraterrestrial body, such as a planet or moon. The term, which means, "ditch" or "trench" in Latin, is not a geological term as such but a descriptor term used by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and the International Astronomical Union (IAU) for topographic features whose geology or geomorphology is uncertain due to lack of data or knowledge of the exact processes that formed them. Fossae are believed to be the result of a number of geological processes, such as faulting or subsidence. Many fossae on Mars are probably graben.  Grabens are formed by volcanic processes.  Cyane Fossae is located at about 235°E and if we go straight south there is another furrowed region  which is called Sulci Gordii at about 21°N.

The terraced hills of Sulci Gordii

Many dark streaks are visible here.  Research, published in January 2012 in Icarus, found that dark streaks were initiated by air blasts from meteorites traveling at supersonic speeds. The team of scientists was led by Kaylan Burleigh, an undergraduate at the University of Arizona. After counting some 65,000 dark streaks around the impact site of a group of five new craters, patterns emerged. The number of streaks was greatest closer to the impact site. Therefore, the impact somehow probably caused the streaks. In addition, the distribution of the streaks formed a pattern with two wings extending from the impact site. The curved wings resembled scimitars, curved knives. This pattern suggests that an interaction of air blasts from the group of meteorites shook dust loose enough to start dust avalanches that formed the many dark streaks.

Going to 10°N and between 230-235 °E we come to Gigas Sulci. 

Gigas Sulci seen as seen by THEMIS.

The wavy linear ridges are dunes. Dark slope streaks are visible on some slopes.

At  10°N 235 °E we come to the Ulysses Fossae.

Mount in the Ulysses Fossae

The Tharsis Region is also home to large troughs (long narrow depressions) called fossae in the geographical language used for Mars. Some of the fossae in this Region are Ulysses Fossae, Olympica Fossae, Ceraunius Fossae, and Tractus Fossae. These troughs form when the crust is stretched until it breaks. The stretching can be due to the large weight of a nearby volcano. Studies have shown that the volcanoes of Tharsis caused most of the major fossae on Mars. The stress that caused the fossae and other tectonic features is centered in Noctis Labyrinthus, at 4 S and 253 E. However, the center has moved somewhat over time. Fossae/pit craters are common near volcanoes in the Tharsis and Elysium system of volcanoes.

At 3°N 235°E, we come Biblis Tholus and right next to it is the Biblis Patera.

THEMIS daytime infrared image mosaic showing the volcano Biblis Tholus in the southern part of the Tharsis region of Mars 

Biblis Patera surface topography of Caldera

Next to them ,are another set of volcanoes to the east the Ulysses Tholus and Ulysses Patera.   These two are much closer to each other than the first two.

THEMIS daytime infrared image mosaic showing the volcanoes Biblis Ulysses and Ulysses Patera.

Ulysses Patera, with its location in relation to other volcanoes in the area.

Volcanic activity, or volcanism, has played a significant role in the geologic evolution of Mars. Scientists have known since the Mariner 9 mission in 1972 that volcanic features cover large portions of the Martian surface. These features include extensive lava flows, vast lava plains, and the largest known volcanoes in the Solar System. Martian volcanic features range in age from Noachian (>3.7 billion years) to late Amazonian (< 500 million years), indicating that the planet has been volcanically active throughout its history and probably still is so today. Both Earth and Mars are large, differentiated planets built from similar chondritic materials. Many of the same magmatic processes that occur on Earth also occur on Mars, and both planets are similar enough compositionally that the same names can be applied to their igneous rocks and minerals.  Volcanism is a process in which magma from a planet’s interior rises through the crust and erupts on the surface. The erupted materials consist of molten rock (lava), hot fragmental debris (tephra or ash), and gases. Volcanism is a principal way that planets release their internal heat. Volcanic eruptions produce distinctive landforms, rock types, and terrains that provide a window on the chemical composition, thermal state, and history of a planet's interior.

Going further east at 5° N 244° E  we come to the Pavonis Sulci.

Example of the Pavonis Sulci Region

Just to the east of Pavonis Sulci is the big Volcano Pavonis Mons.  

Small Pale Red Planet Issue 2 Phase 2

Amazonis Region
MC-8

 

Topographical Map of the Amazonis Region

This Region covers the area from 135°- 180° East longitude and 0° to 30° north latitude on Mars. This area is considered to be among the youngest parts of Mars because it has a very low density of craters.

 

Image of the Amazonis Region
 

The Amazonia period is named after this area. This Region
n contains special, unusual features called the Medusae Fossae Formation and the Lycus Sulci.

Coming from the northwest into the Amazonis Region we come to a hilly region called the Tartarus Colles.  The Tartarus Colles only occupies the northwest corner of the Amazonia Region.  It is located roughly from 20-30 N to about 185°E.  The rest of the Tartarus Colles lies to the west in the Elysium Region.
 

Cratered Cones and Dissected Mantle in Tartarus Colles.

 

Mars is fundamentally a volcanic planet. Geologic mapping of Mars shows that about half the surface seems to be covered with volcanic materials that have been modified to some extent by other processes (such as meteorite impacts, blowing wind, floods of water, and sand). Mars has the largest volcanoes in the entire Solar System. The great volumes of erupted lava have had a profound impact on the entire planet, by extracting heat and erupting selected chemicals from within, then adding large amounts of acidic gas to the atmosphere, which provided heat to melt frozen water in the crust. Mars cannot be understood without studying its volcanoes.   We see the results of these actions today when the planet is no longer as active as it once was in the past.

 

Tartarus Colles Channel, as seen by HiRISE. Scale bar is 500 meters long. Location is 24.5 degrees north latitude and 188.1 degrees east longitude. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s HiRISE took the image.

 

South of this region, we come to Marte Vallis.  Marte Vallis is a valley in the Amazonis Region of Mars, located at 15 North and 176.5 East. It is 185 km long and was named after the Spanish word for “Mars”.
 

Marte Vallis

 

It has been identified as an outflow channel, carved in the geological past by catastrophic release of water from aquifers beneath the Martian surface.  Marte Vallis is the site of the first discovery of columnar jointing on Mars.
 

This is an example of Columnar Jointing on Earth

 

Marte Vallis Streamlined land forms

 

To the east is the Amazonis Planitia is one of the smoothest plains on Mars. It is located between the Tharsis and Elysium volcanic provinces, to the west of Olympus Mons, in the Amazonis and Memnonia Regions, centered at  24.8° N.and 196.0°E. The plain's topography exhibits extremely smooth features at several different lengths of scale.  Only approximately 100 million years old, these plains provide some of the fewest sedimentary layers impeding viewing of the Martian terrain, and closely resemble the composition of Earth's Iceland formed by free-flowing lava across great plains.
 

Amazonis Planitia

The entire contemporary era on Mars has been named the Amazonian Epoch because researchers originally (and incorrectly) thought Amazonis Planitia to be representative of all Martian plains. Instead, over the past two decades, researchers have realized that the area's youth and extremely smooth surface actually distinguish the area from its neighbors. It is even possible that the area possessed distinctive characteristics when this part of Mars was under water. Although the full implications of the Region’s youth have not yet been determined, the nature of the area (i.e. lack of sedimentary rock) has at least provided researchers evidence that this area is most likely to provide future discoveries, and as such, has been proposed as a future site for most NASA landings.

Just south of the Marte Vallis is Petit Crater.
 

Pettit Crater Rim, as seen by HiRISE. Location is 12.5 degrees north latitude and 185.4 degrees east longitude.

 

This crater is 92.49 km in diameter.  It was named after the American Astronomer Edison Petit (1890-1962).

There are hundreds of thousands of craters on Mars, but only some of them have names.  Large Martian craters (greater than 60 km in diameter) are named after famous scientists and science fiction authors; smaller ones (less than 60 km in diameter) get their names from towns on Earth. Craters cannot be named for living people, and small crater names are not intended to be commemorative - that is, a small crater is not actually named after a specific town on Earth, but rather its name comes at random from a pool of terrestrial place names, with some exceptions made for craters near landing sites.

Going southeast, we come to Nicholson Crater, which straddles the equator.  Part of if is in the Amazonis Region and part of it is in the Memnonia Region.
 

Nicholson Crater

 

Nicholson is a crater on Mars centered at 0.1° N and 164.5° W. It is 62 miles wide (100 km). Nicholson is a good marker for the equator as it sits almost directly on the Martian equator. It is named after Seth Barnes Nicholson, an American astronomer. Nicholson is notable for its central peak, which rises in a high mound 3.5 km above the crater floor. This rounded peak is riddled with channels, which may have been eroded by wind or even water.

Nicholson Crater and surrounding territory

 

Many places on Mars show dark streaks on steep slopes like crater walls. It seems that the youngest streaks are dark; they become lighter with age. Often they begin as a small narrow spot then widen and extend downhill for hundreds of meters. They have been seen to travel around obstacles, like boulders. Several ideas have been advanced to explain the streaks. Some involve water or even the growth of organisms. It is most generally accepted that they represent avalanches of dust. However, more recently a theory has come out that these streaks could have been caused by melting dry ice.
 

Dark streaks seen in the central mound of Nicholson Crater.

 

Going east, we come to Medusae Fossae Formation, which includes the Eumenides Dorsa..  The Medusae Fossae Formation is located right on the equator also. It starts in the Amazonis Region at about 10°N and  199°E.  It extends across the equator into the Memnonia Region to the south.

 

Plateau made up of Medusae Fossae materials and rootless cones, as seen by HiRISE.

 

The Amazonis Region is of special interest to scientists because it contains a big part of a formation, called the Medusae Fossae Formation.

 

 

 

Sinuous Ridges Cutting Geological Units of the Medusae Fossae Formation
 

 

 

 A soft, easily eroded deposit extends for nearly 1,000 km along the equator of Mars. The surface of the formation has been eroded by the wind into a series of linear ridges called yardangs.
 

Yardangs in the Medusae Fossae formation, as seen by HiRISE

 

These ridges generally point in direction of the prevailing winds that carved them and demonstrate the erosive power of Martian winds. The easily eroded nature of the Medusae Fossae Formation suggests that it is composed of weakly cemented particles, and was most likely formed by the deposition of wind-blown dust or volcanic ash. The Medusae Fossae Formation could have easily been formed from ash from the volcanoes Apollinaris Mons, Arsia Mons, and/or possibly Pavonis Mons.

 

Medusae Fossae Formation and its location relative to Olympus Mons, as seen by THEMIS.

In this region, we only come near to the western part of the basal scarp of the Olympus Mons Volcano.  But first we have to go through the Lycus Sulci area to get to it.

The Lycus Sulci is very rugged terrain  that extends from the base of Olympus Mons. The furrows are huge—up to a full kilometer deep. It would be extremely difficult to walk across it or to land a space ship there.
 

Surface features of Lycus Sulci, as seen by HiRISE

 

Lycus Sulci is a feature in the Amazonis Region on Mars, with its location centered at 24.6° north latitude and 141.1° east longitude. It is 350 km long and is named after a classical albedo feature name.  The Lycus Sulci surrounds the western side of the Olympus Mons.

The Lycus Sulci in Amazonis, as seen by THEMIS.

 

"Sulci" in Mars geography language means a furrow, like a furrow on a brain's surface. These Sulci spread out from the basal scarp of Olympus Mons.
 

Map Location of Lycus Sulci around the western scarp of Mons Olympus

 

Perspective of the Basal Scarp of Mons Olympus

Small Pale Red Planet Issue 2 Phase 1

 

Life on Mars

 

Extraterrestrial life and Background:

It is very important that we investigate the possibility of life on Mars.  No location has been pinpointed by our science more whether it be science itself or science-fiction.  Educated speculation indicates that if there is life on the Planet it is in the rocks, below the surface of the planet or in caves.  Life may also exist on the Planet in places where there is an extremely low elevation that makes for an increase in atmospheric pressure and thickened atmosphere with enough local magnetism to preserve the life in that location.  Mars is a dry bleached planet even though water is present below the surface and dry ice is present on it’s surface It is constantly bombarded with strong solar radiation with temperatures averaging -80 F.  Equivalent to the coldest place on Earth in Antarctica.  The surface from what we see today is completely lifeless.

Extraterrestrial life  is defined as life that does not originate from Earth. It is often also referred to as alien life, or simply aliens (or space aliens, to differentiate from other definitions of alien or aliens). These hypothetical forms of life range from simple bacteria-like organisms to beings far more complex than humans. The possibility that viruses might also exist extraterrestrially has been proposed.  Many scientists consider extraterrestrial life to be plausible, but there is no direct evidence of its existence. Since the mid-20th century, there has been an ongoing search for signs of extraterrestrial life, from radios used to detect possible extraterrestrial signals, to telescopes used to search for potentially habitable extrasolar planets.

Alien life, such as bacteria, has been hypothesized to exist in the Solar System and throughout the universe. This hypothesis relies on the vast size and consistent physical laws of the observable universe. According to this argument, made by scientists such as Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking, it would be improbable for life not to exist somewhere other than Earth. This argument is embodied in the Copernican principle, which states that the Earth does not occupy a unique position in the Universe, and the mediocrity principle, which holds that there is nothing special about life on Earth. Life may have emerged independently at many places throughout the Universe.  According to these studies, this same process may also occur around other stars that acquire planets.  Suggested locations at which life might have developed include the planets Venus and Mars, Jupiter's moon Europa, and Saturn's moons Titan and Enceladus. Since the 1950s, scientists have promoted the idea that "habitable zones" as the most likely places for life to be found. Numerous discoveries in this zone since 2007 have stimulated estimations of frequencies of Earth-like habitats numbering in the many billions though as of 2013, only a small number of planets have been discovered in these habitable zones-especially where planets are believed to have water.  More recently, astrobiologists have increasingly shifted toward a "follow the energy" view for potential habitats.

Mars Express- Life on Mars