NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE Images April 25, 2012

– How Did Valles Marineris Form? http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ESP_025415_1675

The opening of Valles Marineris did involve crustal spreading and faulting, but may have had a more complex history.

– Folded Layers in Melas Chasma, Central Valles Marineris http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ESP_026312_1700

How did this folding occur? On Earth, rocks are commonly folded when deeply buried and subject to high heat and pressure, which can make any rock flow.

– Sedimentary Layers in West Candor Chasma http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ESP_026378_1730

West Candor Chasma in central Valles Marineris contains some of the thickest of the fine-grained layered deposits on Mars.

– Terrain Near the MSL Landing Site http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ESP_026568_1750

This image is of a region slightly to the southwest of where the MSL rover, called Curiosity, will land in August 2012.

All of the HiRISE images are archived here:

http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/

Information about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is online at http://www.nasa.gov/mro. The mission is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, of Denver, is the prime contractor and built the spacecraft. HiRISE is operated by the University of Arizona. Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp., of Boulder, Colo., built the HiRISE instrument.