Essay On Martian Geology

Geologic features. The martian geology is different than Earth in many ways when it comes to the soil and the plate tectonics.

Red soil. Mars is called the red planet for a reason. The soil on Mars is rich in magnetic iron oxides which is rust. Scientists took a soil sample that mimics that of Mars and tested it to see if it would rust the way it looks like on Mars. The iron was unchanged after a year in a dry atmosphere and finally changed when the sample was put in a wet atmosphere. (R., 2005)

Canyons. The martian canyons are huge compared to the ones seen on Earth. Scientist suggest that there had to have been a continual flow of water to erode the rock and form the deep and long canyons. Valles Marineris is a canyon near Olympus Mons. The canyon is 2500 miles long and 7 miles deep. (Cowen, 1998)

Volcanoes. Mars is home to the largest volcano in the solar system, Olympus Mons. Olympus Mons is extinct and stands 16 miles (25 kilometers) and has a caldera that is 50 miles (80 kilometers) wide. Nearby are three smaller volcanoes that are also extinct. These volcanoes are near the canyon, Valles Marineris. From Mars no longer generating heat

A University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) professor of Earth was studying images taken from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The images were revealing signs of plate tectonics. Mars was showing signs of what looked like fault systems. An Yin had said, “When I studied the satellite images from Mars, many of the features looked very much like fault systems I have seen in the Himalayas and Tibet, and in California as well, including the geomorphology.” What this means is that the way that the martian landscape looks is very similar to Earth’s and easily could have been formed the same way the Earth landscapes did. The cliff sides on Mars are very comparable to the ones in California’s Death Valley. Mars is divided into two plates which he refers to as Valles Marineris North and South. (Wolpert,