Another Perspective View of Hebes Chasma

Credit: ESA/ DLR/ FU Berlin (G. Neukum), Posted on: Thursday, 3 April 2008, 06:38 CDT Download full size image

Hebes Chasma is an enclosed trough, almost 8000 m deep, in Valles Marineris, the Grand Canyon of Mars, where water is believed to have flowed. The High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on ESA’s Mars Express studied the area providing new pictorial clues to its history.

This image shows a perspective view of Hebes Chasma obtained by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft.

A flat-topped mountain is located in the centre of Hebes Chasma (3). It reaches 8000 m above the graben floor and rises to almost the same height as the plain surrounding the trough.

The mountain is made up of numerous rock layers stacked on top of each other, perhaps made out of remnants of an older plateau, sediments from a lake, wind-blown sediments or volcanic rocks. The rock layers were exposed by erosion.

Hebes Chasma is located at approximately 1° south and 282° east. The HRSC obtained image data on 16 September 2005 with a ground resolution of approximately 15 m/pixel.

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