rocks ejected from nearby impact The evolution of terrestrial planets craters. The regions around the landers resemble rocky deserts on the Earth. Terrestrial planets formed by accretion The Pathfinder lander and the Sojourner about 4.6 billion years ago. rover explored Ares Vallis for about 3 The impacts that formed them and the months in 1997. decay of their radioactive materials Pathfinder images showed abundant heated the planets enough that their evidence of ancient floods while Sojourner measured the chemical internal temperature reached the melting composition of rocks and soil. The Spirit point of iron, it forms the core . and Opportunity rovers found strong Light, silicate materials floated to the evidence that water once covered the surface and cooled to become the surface of Mars. planetary crusts. Mars Global Surveyor shows Mars to be The extent to which each planet has a planet with two different faces. cooled and become volcanically inactive Mars south pole resembles to the depends on size. The smaller planets highlands of the moon. quickly became inactive while the larger Mars north pole sparsely cratered plains planets remain tectonically and resembling the lunar maria. volcanically active. b. Tharsis Region The northern hemisphere has many The interior and evolution of mars volcanos, including several gigantic ones in the region 19th century observers radioactive decays heated its interior called Tharsis. until iron melted and accumulated in its Arsia Mons, Pavonis Mons, Ascraeus core. Mons and Olympus Mons A clue about the nature of Marss The heights of the Tharsis volcanos interior is the red reddish color of its show that the magma that formed them surface, which the Viking lander rose from great depths, where pressure experiments have shown to be due to was large enough to lift the magma to iron compounds. the summits of the volcanos. rocks in the mantle melted partially to c. Martian Craters produce magma, which flooded the About half of the surface of Mars is surface and produced large volcanos. covered with ancient craters. Ejected Mars expanded as it grew hotter, material appears to have flowed away perhaps causing its crust to pull apart from many craters. This suggests that and produce Valles Marineris. there may be subsurface ice or water on Mars has cooled and become less active Mars. for the last several billion years. We can estimate the ages of Martian volcanos and lava flows by measuring The surface of Mars crater densities. a. Exploration of Mars Surface Five spacecrafttwo Viking landers, d. Crustal Motions Pathfinder, Spirit, and Opportunity The many faults and chasms on Mars have successfully landed on Mars and show that there has been considerable returned pictures and measurements crustal motion. The most spectacular from the Martian surface. example of crustal motion is the Valles Marineris canyon system. Much of the crustal motion seems to have occurred Atmosphere of Mars as a consequence of the weight of the The atmosphere of Mars consists Tharsis bulge. Long ago, Mars primarily of carbon dioxide. experienced a period of plate tectonic Martian weather is very monotonous; activity. each day is nearly the same as the previous one because Mars has little e. Martian Channels water vapor and no surface water, There are two kinds of Martian factors responsible for much of the Channels: Run-off channel and outflow weather that occurs on the Earth. channel The major atmospheric events on Mars Runoff channels look like river systems are great dust storms that fill the and were cut by the collection of atmosphere with dust for weeks at a underground water or rainfall. time during southern summer. Outflow channels were cut by Water on Mars catastrophic floods produced by the Little water (in solid, liquid, or gaseous sudden release of large amounts of form) can be found on Mars today. underground water However, surface features such as its Mars Global Surveyor images taken in channels show that Mars once had much 2002 and 2005 show that gullies are still more water than we have been able to forming on Mars. The new gullies measure. suggest that Martian sand dunes may It is likely that most of Marss water is contain water ice. trapped as permanently frozen, f. Polar Regions subsurface ice. Both the north and south poles of Mars Life on Mars have permanent polar caps. The Viking biology experiments showed The larger northern cap is made that the Martian soil is chemically primarily of water while the southern active, but probably does not harbor life. cap also contains a large percentage of carbon dioxide (dry ice). The permanent polar cap is made of ice and dirt and is about 1000km across. During winter the polar caps grow as thin layers of dry ice form about the permanent cap. The polar regions of Mars are covered by thick layers of sediments deposited as windblown dust from other parts of Mars.
Meteorites from Mars
Debris from some Martian impact craters was blasted into space and eventually reached the Earth. About two dozen meteorites, known as the SNC meteorites, show some remarkable properties. The SNC meteorites contain inert gases similar in composition to the inert gases in the Martian atmosphere as measured by Viking.