350 Chapter 10 Earthlike Planets: Venus and Mars

10.4 THE GEOLOGY OF MARS

Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Discuss the main missions that have explored Mars

Explain what we have learned from examination of meteorites from Mars
Describe the various features found on the surface of Mars
Compare the volcanoes and canyons on Mars with those of Earth
Describe the general conditions on the surface of Mars

Mars is more interesting to most people than Venus because it is more hospitable. Even from the distance of
Earth, we can see surface features on Mars and follow the seasonal changes in its polar caps (Figure 10.13).
Although the surface today is dry and cold, evidence collected by spacecraft suggests that Mars once had blue
skies and lakes of liquid water. Even today, it is the sort of place we can imagine astronauts visiting and perhaps
even setting up permanent bases.

Figure 10.13 Mars Photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope. This is one of the best photos of Mars taken from our planet, obtained in
June 2001 when Mars was only 68 million kilometers away. The resolution is about 20 kilometers—much better than can be obtained with
ground-based telescopes but still insufficient to reveal the underlying geology of Mars. (credit: modification of work by NASA and the Hubble
Heritage Team (STScI/AURA))

Spacecraft Exploration of Mars

Mars has been intensively investigated by spacecraft. More than 50 spacecraft have been launched toward
Mars, but only about half were fully successful. The first visitor was the US Mariner 4, which flew past Mars
in 1965 and transmitted 22 photos to Earth. These pictures showed an apparently bleak planet with abundant
impact craters. In those days, craters were unexpected; some people who were romantically inclined still hoped
to see canals or something like them. In any case, newspaper headlines sadly announced that Mars was a “dead
planet.”

In 1971, NASA’s Mariner 9 became the first spacecraft to orbit another planet, mapping the entire surface

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Chapter 10 Earthlike Planets: Venus and Mars 351

of Mars at a resolution of about 1 kilometer and discovering a great variety of geological features, including
volcanoes, huge canyons, intricate layers on the polar caps, and channels that appeared to have been cut by
running water. Geologically, Mars didn’t look so dead after all.

The twin Viking spacecraft of the 1970s were among the most ambitious and successful of all planetary
missions. Two orbiters surveyed the planet and served to relay communications for two landers on the surface.
After an exciting and sometimes frustrating search for a safe landing spot, the Viking 1 lander touched down on
the surface of Chryse Planitia (the Plains of Gold) on July 20, 1976, exactly 7 years after Neil Armstrong’s historic
first step on the Moon. Two months later, Viking 2 landed with equal success in another plain farther north,
called Utopia. The landers photographed the surface with high resolution and carried out complex experiments
searching for evidence of life, while the orbiters provided a global perspective on Mars geology.

Mars languished unvisited for two decades after Viking. Two more spacecraft were launched toward Mars, by
NASA and the Russian Space Agency, but both failed before reaching the planet.

The situation changed in the 1990s as NASA began a new exploration program using spacecraft that were
smaller and less expensive than Viking. The first of the new missions, appropriately called Pathfinder, landed the
first wheeled, solar-powered rover on the martian surface on July 4, 1997 (Figure 10.14). An orbiter called Mars
Global Surveyor (MGS) arrived a few months later and began high-resolution photography of the entire surface
over more than one martian year. The most dramatic discovery by this spacecraft, which is still operating, was
evidence of gullies apparently cut by surface water, as we will discuss later. These missions were followed in
2003 by the NASA Mars Odyssey orbiter, and the ESA Mars Express orbiter, both carrying high-resolution cameras.
A gamma-ray spectrometer on Odyssey discovered a large amount of subsurface hydrogen (probably in the
form of frozen water). Subsequent orbiters included the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to evaluate future
landing sites, MAVEN to study the upper atmosphere, and India’s Mangalayaan, also focused on study of Mars’
thin layers of air. Several of these orbiters are also equipped to communicate with landers and rovers on the
surface and serve as data relays to Earth.

Figure 10.14 Surface View from Mars Pathfinder. The scene from the Pathfinder lander shows a windswept plain, sculpted long ago when
water flowed out of the martian highlands and into the depression where the spacecraft landed. The Sojourner rover, the first wheeled vehicle
on Mars, is about the size of a microwave oven. Its flat top contains solar cells that provided electricity to run the vehicle. You can see the ramp
from the lander and the path the rover took to the larger rock that the mission team nicknamed “Yogi.” (credit: NASA/JPL)

In 2003, NASA began a series of highly successful Mars landers. Twin Mars Exploration Rovers (MER), named
Spirit and Opportunity, have been successful far beyond their planned lifetimes. The design goal for the rovers
was 600 meters of travel; in fact, they have traveled jointly more than 50 kilometers. After scouting around its
rim, Opportunity drove down the steep walls into an impact crater called Victoria, then succeeded with some
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difficulty in climbing back out to resume its route (Figure 10.15). Dust covering the rovers’ solar cells caused
a drop in power, but when a seasonal dust storm blew away the dust, the rovers resumed full operation. In
order to survive winter, the rovers were positioned on slopes to maximize solar heating and power generation.
In 2006, Spirit lost power on one of its wheels, and subsequently became stuck in the sand, where it continued
operation as a fixed ground station. Meanwhile, in 2008, Phoenix (a spacecraft “reborn” of spare parts from a
previous Mars mission that had failed) landed near the edge of the north polar cap, at latitude 68°, and directly
measured water ice in the soil.

Figure 10.15 Victoria Crater. (a) This crater in Meridiani Planum is 800 meters wide, making it slightly smaller than Meteor crater on Earth.
Note the dune field in the interior. (b) This image shows the view from the Opportunity rover as it scouted the rim of Victoria crater looking for a
safe route down into the interior. (credit a: modification of work by NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Cornell/Phio State University; credit
b: modification of work by NASA/JPL/Cornell)

In 2011, NASA launched its largest (and most expensive) Mars mission since Viking (see Figure 10.1). The 1-ton
rover Curiosity, the size of a subcompact car, has plutonium-powered electrical generators, so that it is not
dependent on sunlight for power. Curiosity made a pinpoint landing on the floor of Gale crater, a site selected
for its complex geology and evidence that it had been submerged by water in the past. Previously, Mars landers
had been sent to flat terrains with few hazards, as required by their lower targeting accuracy. The scientific
goals of Curiosity include investigations of climate and geology, and assessment of the habitability of past and
present Mars environments. It does not carry a specific life detection instrument, however. So far, scientists
have not been able to devise a simple instrument that could distinguish living from nonliving materials on Mars.

LINK TO LEARNING

The Curiosity rover required a remarkably complex landing sequence and NASA made a video
(https://openstax.org/l/30Curiosityrove) about it called “7 Minutes of Terror” that went viral on the
Internet.

A dramatic video summary (https://openstax.org/l/30MarsSurface) of the first two years of Curiosity’s

exploration of the martian surface can be viewed as well.

Martian Samples
Much of what we know of the Moon, including the circumstances of its origin, comes from studies of lunar

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Chapter 10 Earthlike Planets: Venus and Mars 353

samples, but spacecraft have not yet returned martian samples to Earth for laboratory analysis. It is with great
interest, therefore, that scientists have discovered that samples of martian material are nevertheless already
here on Earth, available for study. These are all members of a rare class of meteorites (Figure 10.16)—rocks that
have fallen from space.

Figure 10.16 Martian Meteorite. This fragment of basalt, ejected from Mars in a crater-forming impact, eventually arrived on Earth’s surface.
(credit: NASA)

How would rocks have escaped from Mars? Many impacts have occurred on the red planet, as shown by its
heavily cratered surface. Fragments blasted from large impacts can escape from Mars, whose surface gravity
is only 38% of Earth’s. A long time later (typically a few million years), a very small fraction of these fragments
collide with Earth and survive their passage through our atmosphere, just like other meteorites. (We’ll discuss
meteorites in more detail in the chapter on Cosmic Samples and the Origin of the Solar System.) By the way,
rocks from the Moon have also reached our planet as meteorites, although we were able to demonstrate their
lunar origin only by comparison with samples returned by the Apollo missions

Most of the martian meteorites are volcanic basalts; most of them are also relatively young—about 1.3 billion
years old. We know from details of their composition that they are not from Earth or the Moon. Besides, there
was no volcanic activity on the Moon to form them as recently as 1.3 billon years ago. It would be very difficult
for ejecta from impacts on Venus to escape through its thick atmosphere. By the process of elimination, the
only reasonable origin seems to be Mars, where the Tharsis volcanoes were active at that time.

The martian origin of these meteorites was confirmed by the analysis of tiny gas bubbles trapped inside several
of them. These bubbles match the atmospheric properties of Mars as first measured directly by Viking. It
appears that some atmospheric gas was trapped in the rock by the shock of the impact that ejected it from
Mars and started it on its way toward Earth.

One of the most exciting results from analysis of these martian samples has been the discovery of both water
and organic (carbon-based) compounds in them, which suggests that Mars may once have had oceans and
perhaps even life on its surface. As we have already hinted, there is other evidence for the presence of flowing
water on Mars in the remote past, and even extending to the present.

In this and the following sections, we will summarize the picture of Mars as revealed by all these exploratory
missions and by about 40 samples from Mars.

Global Properties of Mars

Mars has a diameter of 6790 kilometers, just over half the diameter of Earth, giving it a total surface area very
nearly equal to the continental (land) area of our planet. Its overall density of 3.9 g/cm3 suggests a composition
consisting primarily of silicates but with a small metal core. The planet has no global magnetic field, although
there are areas of strong surface magnetization that indicate that there was a global field billions of years ago.
Apparently, the red planet has no liquid material in its core today that would conduct electricity.
354 Chapter 10 Earthlike Planets: Venus and Mars

Thanks to the Mars Global Surveyor, we have mapped the entire planet, as shown in Figure 10.17. A laser
altimeter on board made millions of separate measurements of the surface topography to a precision of a few
meters—good enough to show even the annual deposition and evaporation of the polar caps. Like Earth, the
Moon, and Venus, the surface of Mars has continental or highland areas as well as widespread volcanic plains.
The total range in elevation from the top of the highest mountain ( Olympus Mons) to the bottom of the deepest
basin (Hellas) is 31 kilometers.

Figure 10.17 Mars Map from Laser Ranging. These globes are highly precise topographic maps, reconstructed from millions of individual
elevation measurements made with the Mars Global Surveyor. Color is used to indicate elevation. The hemisphere on the left includes the Tharsis
bulge and Olympus Mons, the highest mountain on Mars; the hemisphere on the right includes the Hellas basin, which has the lowest elevation
on Mars. (credit: modification of work by NASA/JPL)

Approximately half the planet consists of heavily cratered highland terrain, found primarily in the southern
hemisphere. The other half, which is mostly in the north, contains younger, lightly cratered volcanic plains at
an average elevation about 5 kilometers lower than the highlands. Remember that we saw a similar pattern on
Earth, the Moon, and Venus. A geological division into older highlands and younger lowland plains seems to be
characteristic of all the terrestrial planets except Mercury.

Lying across the north-south division of Mars is an uplifted continent the size of North America. This is the
10-kilometer-high Tharsis bulge, a volcanic region crowned by four great volcanoes that rise still higher into the
martian sky.

Volcanoes on Mars
The lowland plains of Mars look very much like the lunar maria, and they have about the same density of
impact craters. Like the lunar maria, they probably formed between 3 and 4 billion years ago. Apparently, Mars
experienced extensive volcanic activity at about the same time the Moon did, producing similar basaltic lavas.

The largest volcanic mountains of Mars are found in the Tharsis area (you can see them in Figure 10.17),
although smaller volcanoes dot much of the surface. The most dramatic volcano on Mars is Olympus Mons
(Mount Olympus), with a diameter larger than 500 kilometers and a summit that towers more than 20
kilometers above the surrounding plains—three times higher than the tallest mountain on Earth (Figure 10.18).
The volume of this immense volcano is nearly 100 times greater than that of Mauna Loa in Hawaii. Placed on

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Chapter 10 Earthlike Planets: Venus and Mars 355

Earth’s surface, Olympus would more than cover the entire state of Missouri.

Figure 10.18 Olympus Mons. The largest volcano on Mars, and probably the largest in the solar system, is Olympus Mons, illustrated in this
computer-generated rendering based on data from the Mars Global Surveyor’s laser altimeter. Placed on Earth, the base of Olympus Mons would
completely cover the state of Missouri; the caldera, the circular opening at the top, is 65 kilometers across, about the size of Los Angeles. (credit:
NASA/Corbis)

Images taken from orbit allow scientists to search for impact craters on the slopes of these volcanoes in order
to estimate their age. Many of the volcanoes show a fair number of such craters, suggesting that they ceased
activity a billion years or more ago. However, Olympus Mons has very, very few impact craters. Its present
surface cannot be more than about 100 million years old; it may even be much younger. Some of the fresh-
looking lava flows might have been formed a hundred years ago, or a thousand, or a million, but geologically
speaking, they are quite young. This leads geologists to the conclusion that Olympus Mons possibly remains
intermittently active today—something future Mars land developers may want to keep in mind.

Martian Cracks and Canyons

The Tharsis bulge has many interesting geological features in addition to its huge volcanoes. In this part of
the planet, the surface itself has bulged upward, forced by great pressures from below, resulting in extensive
tectonic cracking of the crust. Among the most spectacular tectonic features on Mars are the canyons called the
Valles Marineris (or Mariner Valleys, named after Mariner 9, which first revealed them to us), which are shown
in Figure 10.19. They extend for about 5000 kilometers (nearly a quarter of the way around Mars) along the
slopes of the Tharsis bulge. If it were on Earth, this canyon system would stretch all the way from Los Angeles
to Washington, DC. The main canyon is about 7 kilometers deep and up to 100 kilometers wide, large enough
for the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River to fit comfortably into one of its side canyons.
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Figure 10.19 Heavily Eroded Canyonlands on Mars. This image shows the Valles Marineris canyon complex, which is 3000 kilometers wide
and 8 kilometers deep. (credit: NASA/JPL/USGS)

LINK TO LEARNING

An excellent 4-minute video tour (https://openstax.org/l/30VallesMariner) of Valles Marineris,

narrated by planetary scientist Phil Christensen, is available for viewing.

The term “canyon” is somewhat misleading here because the Valles Marineris canyons have no outlets and
were not cut by running water. They are basically tectonic cracks, produced by the same crustal tensions that
caused the Tharsis uplift. However, water has played a later role in shaping the canyons, primarily by seeping
from deep springs and undercutting the cliffs. This undercutting led to landslides that gradually widened the
original cracks into the great valleys we see today (Figure 10.20). Today, the primary form of erosion in the
canyons is probably wind.

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Chapter 10 Earthlike Planets: Venus and Mars 357

Figure 10.20 Martian Landslides. This Viking orbiter image shows Ophir Chasma, one of the connected valleys of the Valles Marineris canyon
system. Look carefully and you can see enormous landslides whose debris is piled up underneath the cliff wall, which tower up to 10 kilometers
above the canyon floor. (credit: modification of work by NASA/JPL/USGS)

While the Tharsis bulge and Valles Marineris are impressive, in general, we see fewer tectonic structures on
Mars than on Venus. In part, this may reflect a lower general level of geological activity, as would be expected
for a smaller planet. But it is also possible that evidence of widespread faulting has been buried by wind-
deposited sediment over much of Mars. Like Earth, Mars may have hidden part of its geological history under a
cloak of soil.

The View on the Martian Surface

The first spacecraft to land successfully on Mars were Vikings 1 and 2 and Mars Pathfinder. All sent back photos
that showed a desolate but strangely beautiful landscape, including numerous angular rocks interspersed with
dune like deposits of fine-grained, reddish soil (Figure 10.21).

Figure 10.21 Three Martian Landing Sites. The Mars landers Viking 1 in Chryse, Pathfinder in Ares Valley, and Viking 2 in Utopia, all
photographed their immediate surroundings. It is apparent from the similarity of these three photos that each spacecraft touched down on a
flat, windswept plain littered with rocks ranging from tiny pebbles up to meter-size boulders. It is probable that most of Mars looks like this on
the surface. (credit “Viking 1”: modification of work by Van der Hoorn/NASA; credit “Pathfinder”: modification of work by NASA; credit “Viking
2”: modification of work by NASA; credit Mars: modification of work by NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center)

All three of these landers were targeted to relatively flat, lowland terrain. Instruments on the landers found
that the soil consisted of clays and iron oxides, as had long been expected from the red color of the planet. All
358 Chapter 10 Earthlike Planets: Venus and Mars

the rocks measured appeared to be of volcanic origin and roughly the same composition. Later landers were
targeted to touch down in areas that apparently were flooded sometime in the past, where sedimentary rock
layers, formed in the presence of water, are common. (Although we should note that nearly all the planet is
blanketed in at least a thin layer of wind-blown dust).

The Viking landers included weather stations that operated for several years, providing a perspective on
martian weather. The temperatures they measured varied greatly with the seasons, due to the absence of
moderating oceans and clouds. Typically, the summer maximum at Viking 1 was 240 K (–33 °C), dropping to 190
K (–83 °C) at the same location just before dawn. The lowest air temperatures, measured farther north by Viking
2, were about 173 K (–100 °C). During the winter, Viking 2 also photographed water frost deposits on the ground
(Figure 10.22). We make a point of saying “water frost” here because at some locations on Mars, it gets cold
enough for carbon dioxide (dry ice) to freeze out of the atmosphere as well.

Figure 10.22 Water Frost in Utopia. This image of surface frost was photographed at the Viking 2 landing site during late winter. (credit:
NASA/JPL)

Most of the winds measured on Mars are only a few kilometers per hour. However, Mars is capable of great
windstorms that can shroud the entire planet with windblown dust. Such high winds can strip the surface of
some of its loose, fine dust, leaving the rock exposed. The later rovers found that each sunny afternoon the
atmosphere became turbulent as heat rose off the surface. This turbulence generated dust devils, which play
an important role in lifting the fine dust into the atmosphere. As the dust devils strip off the top layer of light
dust and expose darker material underneath, they can produce fantastic patterns on the ground (Figure 10.23).

Wind on Mars plays an important role in redistributing surface material. Figure 10.23 shows a beautiful area of
dark sand dunes on top of lighter material. Much of the material stripped out of the martian canyons has been
dumped in extensive dune fields like this, mostly at high latitudes.

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Chapter 10 Earthlike Planets: Venus and Mars 359

Figure 10.23 Dust Devil Tracks and Sand Dunes. (a) This high-resolution photo from the Mars Global Surveyor shows the dark tracks of several
dust devils that have stripped away a thin coating of light-colored dust. This view is of an area about 3 kilometers across. Dust devils are one of
the most important ways that dust gets redistributed by the martian winds. They may also help keep the solar panels of our rovers free of dust.
(b) These windblown sand dunes on Mars overlay a lighter sandy surface. Each dune in this high-resolution view is about 1 kilometer across.
(credit a: modification of work by NASA/JPL/University of Arizona; credit b: modification of work by NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona)

10.5 WATER AND LIFE ON MARS

Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Describe the general composition of the atmosphere on Mars

Explain what we know about the polar ice caps on Mars and how we know it
Describe the evidence for the presence of water in the past history of Mars
Summarize the evidence for and against the possibility of life on Mars

Of all the planets and moons in the solar system, Mars seems to be the most promising place to look for life,
both fossil microbes and (we hope) some forms of life deeper underground that still survive today. But where
(and how) should we look for life? We know that the one requirement shared by all life on Earth is liquid water.
Therefore, the guiding principle in assessing habitability on Mars and elsewhere has been to “follow the water.”
That is the perspective we take in this section, to follow the water on the red planet and hope it will lead us to
life.

Atmosphere and Clouds on Mars

The atmosphere of Mars today has an average surface pressure of only 0.007 bar, less than 1% that of Earth.
(This is how thin the air is about 30 kilometers above Earth’s surface.) Martian air is composed primarily of
carbon dioxide (95%), with about 3% nitrogen and 2% argon. The proportions of different gases are similar to
those in the atmosphere of Venus (see Table 10.2), but a lot less of each gas is found in the thin air on Mars.

While winds on Mars can reach high speeds, they exert much less force than wind of the same velocity would
on Earth because the atmosphere is so thin. The wind is able, however, to loft very fine dust particles, which can
sometimes develop planet-wide dust storms. It is this fine dust that coats almost all the surface, giving Mars its
distinctive red color. In the absence of surface water, wind erosion plays a major role in sculpting the martian
surface (Figure 10.24).