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Mars Express, of the European Space Agency (ESA), imagined part of the Martian landscape, a rocky and fragmented region located at the border of the northern and southern hemispheres, which once formed the floodplains of the red planet.
The region, a craggy, rocky escarpment known as Nili Fossae, lies on the edge of the northern and southern hemispheres.
This is an impressive example of past activities on the planet and shows where wind, water and ice transported materials from one place to another, creating distinctive patterns and reliefs, said ESA in a statement.
Despite Mars' current reputation as a dry and arid world, it is thought that water played a key role in the sculpture of Nili Fossae due to continued erosion.
Nili Fossae is filled with rocky valleys, small hills, and groups of flat reliefs (called mesas in geological terms), with some pieces of crustal rocks appear to be sunk into the surface, creating a number of ditch-like features. like graben, noted ESA.
In addition, the image also showed the terrain of Nili Fossae, located at a higher altitude. This seems to consist mainly of rocky plateaus, while the lower ground includes smaller rocks, mesas, hills and more, with the two sections roughly separated by erosion canals and valleys.
The shapes and structures scattered throughout this image would have been shaped over time by flows of not only water and ice, but also wind, said the ESA.
The images showed apparent spots on the surface, which looked particularly dark on the ocher background, as stained with coal or ink.
These are areas of darker volcanic sand, which have been transported and deposited by the current Martian winds. The wind often moves sand and dust over the surface of Mars, creating undulating dune fields on the planet and forming a multi-colored and fragmented terrain like Nili Fossae, the researchers said.
The data constituting this image was collected by Mars Express's High Resolution Stereoscopic Camera (HRSC) on February 26th.
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