Skip to main content

European Space Agency’s Trace Gas Orbiter snaps a volcanic trench on Mars

A new image of the surface of Mars captured by a European and Russian orbiter shows a stunning overhead view of deep trenches in the surface of the planet created by activity from nearby volcanoes.

Mars is host to Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the solar system, and volcanic activity has played a key part in the evolution of the planet. It’s not clear whether there is still volcanic activity going on there today, but there definitely was at some point in its past. You can see evidence of the volcanism in the lava flows and lava planes that are found on its surface, as well as many volcanoes like Olympus Mons.

 This image of the young volcanic region of Elysium Planitia on Mars shows two blue parallel trenches called Cerberus Fossae.
This image of the young volcanic region of Elysium Planitia on Mars [10.3°N, 159.5°E] was taken on 14 April 2021 by the CaSSIS camera on the ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO). The two blue parallel trenches in this image, called Cerberus Fossae, were thought to have formed by tectonic processes. They run for almost one thousand km over the volcanic region. In this image, CaSSIS is looking straight down into one of these 2 km-wide fissures. ESA/Roscosmos/CaSSIS
Another feature in the Martian landscape left by volcanic activity is deep trenches like the Cerberus Fossae trenches recently imaged by the CaSSIS camera on the European Space Agency and Roscosmos’s Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO). This pair of trenches, located in the volcanic Elysium Planitia region, was likely formed by tectonic activity related to volcanism.

This is a false-color image, meaning that its colors have been processed to show the depth of the trenches in dark blue. The trenches are more than a mile wide and run for around 600 miles across the region. Taken from directly overhead, this image is looking down into the several hundred-meter-deep trenches.

“The floor here is a few hundred meters deep and is filled with coarse-grained sand, likely basaltic in composition, which appears blue in the CaSSIS false-color composite image,” ESA writes. “The flat volcanic plains nearby are punctured by small impact craters, which expose possibly the same basaltic materials that we see within Cerberus Fossae.”

Editors' Recommendations

Georgina Torbet
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
NASA’s Mars orbiter MAVEN saved in a ‘race against time’
Illustration of the MAVEN spacecraft in orbit around Mars.

NASA's MAVEN spacecraft, a Mars orbiter that is now almost a decade old, is back up and running following a scare that saw it put into safe mode for several months. The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN craft resumed science operation on May 28, 2022, NASA recently announced, after recovering from the issue.

The problem began in February 2022, when an issue with the spacecraft's navigation system meant it could no longer determine its orientation. The team lost contact with the spacecraft on February 22, while it was performing routine operations on its Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs). There are two IMUs on board the spacecraft, one primary and one backup. These devices use gyroscopes and accelerometers to measure the movements of the spacecraft as part of the navigation system. Both IMUs stopped working, so while the spacecraft could boot up and operate its other instruments, it could not determine its position in space.

Read more
Look at what a NASA Mars orbiter spotted from 180 miles away
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)

It was already impressive when NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) managed to spot the Perseverance rover soon after it landed on the martian surface last year.

Now the orbiter’s powerful High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) camera has somehow picked out Perseverance’s plucky traveling companion, the Ingenuity helicopter.

Read more
European Space Agency suspends joint Mars mission with Russia
ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover

A joint mission to Mars between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Russian space agency Roscosmos has been suspended due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The ExoMars mission, which included an orbiter launched in 2016 and a planned rover to be launched this year, is now on hold while ESA decides how to proceed.

"As an intergovernmental organisation mandated to develop and implement space programmes in full respect with European values, we deeply deplore the human casualties and tragic consequences of the aggression towards Ukraine," ESA said in a statement. "While recognising the impact on scientific exploration of space, ESA is fully aligned with the sanctions imposed on Russia by its Member States."

Read more