Research Stories

by Robert Burnham

Scientists have color-coded the ground surface according to its overnight temperature. Reddish tones show areas that are warm. Bluish tones show cool areas. Rocks and hard sediments tend to remain warmer at night than do sand, dust, and fine-grain sediments. This allows researchers to map the nature of the surface materials using temperature.

Noctis Labyrinthus is the evocative name for a region on Mars. The Latin name means Labyrinth of Night. Deep canyons weave and intersect in a manner that's, well, labyrinthine. It lies amid a larger area known as Tharsis. The Tharsis region poses questions that planetary scientists at ASU's Mars Space Flight Facility are working to solve.

What happened in this Noctis scene, however, is relatively straightforward. At some time after the canyon network opened up, a meteorite struck near the rim of one canyon. The meteorite was traveling at tens of thousands of miles an hour. It was large enough to blast a crater about 4 miles (6.5 kilometers) wide.

The impact occurred near the canyon rim. As a result, shock waves started a landslide that raced down the wall and strewed rock and other debris across the canyon floor. The debris spread for a distance of 16 miles (25 kilometers). This section of canyon is about 9,800 feet (3,000 meters) deep.

The image seen above is a false-color mosaic made with data from ASU's Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS), developed by Philip Christensen of the School of Earth and Space Exploration. The instrument is one of several working on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter.

Martian landslide : This view looks west across Noctis Labyrinthus from an altitude of about 12 miles (20 kilometers). There is no vertical exaggeration.The impact of a meteorite near the rim of a canyon (left edge) set off an enormous landslide that crashed down almost 10,000 feet from the rim.