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<keyword id="6360409" type="General" weightage="80" keywordseo="nasa" source="Orion">NASA</keyword>'s <keyword id="6474108" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="insight" source="Orion">InSight</keyword> lander has enabled scientists to measure the biggest quakes everwitnessed on Mars.<br /><br />On September 18, NASA's InSight lander celebrated its 1,000th Martian day, or sol, by measuring one of the biggest, longest-lasting marsquakes the mission has ever detected. The temblor is estimated to be of 4.2-magnitude and shook for nearly an hour-and-a-half, NASA said in a statement.<br /><br />This is the third major quake InSight has detected in a month: On August 25, the mission's seismometer detected two quakes of magnitudes 4.2 and 4.1.<br /><br />The previous record holder, which InSight measured in 2019, clocked in at magnitude 3.7 -- about five times less powerful than a 4.2-magnitude quake.<br /><br />Before NASA's InSight spacecraft touched down on Mars in 2018, the rovers and orbiters studying the <keyword id="6385434" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="red-planet" source="Orion">Red Planet</keyword> concentrated on its surface.<br /><br />The stationary lander's seismometer has changed that, revealing details about the planet's deep interior for the first time.<br /><br />The mission aims to study seismic waves to learn more about Mars' interior.<br /><br />While the teams are studying the September 18 quake, scientists have made some analysis of the August 25 quakes. According to them, the 4.2 magnitude event occurred about 8,500 kilometres from InSight. It's the most distant quake the lander has detected so far, NASA said.<br /><br />They also determined that the shaking occurred too far from where InSight had detected almost all of its previous large quakes -- <keyword id="12164988" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="cerberus-fossae" source="Orion">Cerberus Fossae</keyword> -- a region roughly 1,609 kilometres away where lava may have flowed within the last few million years.<br /><br />The scientists are working to pinpoint the source and which direction the seismic waves travelled.<br /><br />"One especially intriguing possibility is <keyword id="3478542" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="valles-marineris" source="Orion">Valles Marineris</keyword>, the epically long canyon system that scars the Martian equator. The approximate center of that canyon system is 9,700 kilometres from InSight,"NASA said.<br /><br />Further, the team also found that the August 25 quakes were different from each other. The magnitude 4.2 quake was dominated by slow, low-frequency vibrations, while fast, high-frequency vibrations characterised the magnitude 4.1 quake. The magnitude 4.1 quake was also much closer to the lander -- only about 925 kilometres away.<br /><br />"Despite their differences, the two August quakes do have something in common other than being big: Both occurred during the day, the windiest -- and, to a seismometer, noisiest -- time on Mars," NASA said.<br /><br />InSight's seismometer usually finds marsquakes at night, when the planet cools off and winds are low. But the signals from these quakes were large enough to rise above any noise caused by wind, the US space agency noted.<br /><br /><strong>SEE ALSO:<br /><a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/ecommerce/news/amazon-diwali-sale-starts-from-october-4/articleshow/86475984.cms">Amazon Great Indian Festival: month-long festive sale kicks off from October 4 onwards</a><br /></strong><a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/stock-market/news/aditya-birla-sun-life-amc-ipo-to-open-on-september-29-with-price-band-695-712-per-share/articleshow/86475370.cms"><strong>Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC’s ₹2768 crore IPO will open on September 29</strong></a>

NASA's InSight lander finds biggest Marsquakes on Red Planet

<ul class="summary-list"><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/china-space-station-nears-completion-sharpens-us-china-space-rivalry-2022-5">China</a>'s <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/china-succeeded-in-photographing-mars-tianwen-1-ice-cap-2022-1">Mars orbiter</a> has <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/china-zhurong-rover-mars-photos-2021-5">imaged</a> the entire red planet, according to state media.</li><li>The <keyword id="14325130" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="tianwen-1" source="Orion">Tianwen-1</keyword> mission — the orbiter and a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/china-first-mars-landing-zhurong-rover-and-lander-2021-5">rover</a> — met its scientific goals, state media said.</li></ul><p><keyword id="11892748" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="china" source="Orion">China</keyword>'s Mars-orbiting <keyword id="12179462" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="spacecraft" source="Orion">spacecraft</keyword> has beamed back stunning images of the red planet's most distinctive features, and they're just a sample of its new photo library.</p><p>The Tianwen-1 orbiter spacecraft has imaged the entire planet of <keyword id="12055530" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="mars" source="Orion">Mars</keyword>, the China Aerospace <keyword id="11896083" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="science" source="Orion">Science</keyword> and Technology Corporation said on <a href="https://weibo.com/5386897742/LzX5XiLpw">Weibo</a> on Wednesday. China released a handful of the orbiter's images from across the Martian surface with the announcement.</p><div type="image" title="craters on mars top-down view from space" height="810" width="1080" msid="92557473" hostid="261" sizebytes="45110"></div><p>Since falling into its <keyword id="12578367" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="orbit" source="Orion">orbit</keyword> there in February 2021, the spacecraft has circled Mars more than 1,300 times, Chinese state media <a href="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-06-29/China-s-Mars-probe-Tianwen-1-completes-mission-1bfTxK5ywtW/index.html">reported</a>. The orbiter brought a <keyword id="12145882" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="rover" source="Orion">rover</keyword> to Mars as well, dropping it into Utopia Planitia, a vast field of ancient volcanic rock that may have extensive reserves of water frozen beneath its surface. The rover, named Zhurong for ancient Chinese mythology's god of fire, aimed to explore the region and search for its water ice with ground-penetrating radar.</p><div type="image" title="ridges of brown red sand on mars with two rover antennae in the foreground" height="462" width="1080" msid="92557474" hostid="261" sizebytes="31888"></div><p>If space agencies like NASA or <keyword id="12911098" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="china-national-space-administration" source="Orion">China National Space Administration</keyword> someday send humans to Mars, water would be a crucial resource. It can both sustain astronauts and be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel. It's unlikely Mars-bound spaceships could carry enough water, oxygen, and hydrogen for the entire journey there and back, so they would likely need to mine it on Mars.</p><div type="image" title="wavy sheet of ice on mars view from space" height="810" width="1080" msid="92557475" hostid="261" sizebytes="25322"></div><p>The Zhurong rover traveled nearly 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) before going into hibernation to save its energy through Mars's hyper-cold winter, according to state media. The rover is expected to power back up in December, when Martian spring arrives.</p><p>This was the first Mars mission to send a spacecraft into the planet's orbit, drop a landing platform onto the Martian surface, and deploy a rover all in one expedition.</p><div type="image" title="china tianwen 1 mission orbiter with lander rover capsule" height="1500" width="2000" msid="92557476" hostid="261" sizebytes="87138"></div><p>Craters were a prominent feature in the images, of course. The below image shows the rim of the ancient Maunder crater, which is about 56 miles (90 kilometers) wide and is partially filled with dust, sand, and other Mars material.</p><div type="image" title="black and white image from space shows craggy crater rim on mars with smooth sand inside" height="918" width="1080" msid="92557477" hostid="261" sizebytes="112052"></div><p>One image captures a stunning view of the Valles Marineris canyon system, which is almost as long as the United States is wide. The canyons there reach up to 4 miles deep. For perspective, the Grand Canyon on Earth is just 1 mile deep.</p><div type="image" title="top-down space view of canyon cutting across orange mars landscape" height="810" width="1080" msid="92557479" hostid="261" sizebytes="34118"></div><p>Both Tianwen-1 robots, on the Martian ground and in its orbit, have completed their scientific missions, state media reported Wednesday. The orbiter has beamed 1,040 gigabytes of raw data back to Earth, which CNSA will eventually release publicly, state media said.</p><p>For now, the mission's findings are not clear.</p>

China's Mars spacecraft has photographed the entire red planet, state media says

<ul class="summary-list"><li><strong><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/mars">Mars</a> may be the next great <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/travel">travel</a> destination of the future. If you took a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/vacation">vacation</a> there, you could see many epic sites. </strong></li><li><strong>In the video above, we'll take you on a virtual <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/tourism">tour</a> of Mars' <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/tourist-attraction">tourist attractions</a>. </strong></li><li><strong>The first stop on our tour is Mars' North Pole, which includes an ice cap bigger than Texas.</strong></li><li><strong>Later on the trip, we'll visit Olympus Mons, the tallest volcano in the solar system, which is three times as tall as Mount Everest.</strong></li><li><strong>We'll also visit Valles Marines, the largest canyon in the solar system, which runs the length of New York to Los Angeles.</strong></li></ul><p><em>Following is a transcript of the video.</em></p><p>Imagine you could vacation on Mars. At first glance, Mars appears very different from Earth, but if you take a closer look, you'll discover that the Red Planet isn't all that different from our own.</p><h2>North Pole</h2><p>Our first stop, the North Pole. This ice cap is bigger than Texas, and is mostly covered in water ice and solid carbon dioxide, aka dry ice. Heading south, we'll visit Kasei Valles. It's a vast system of chasms five times longer and 10 times wider than the Grand Canyon, and scientists think it formed in a similar way. Billions of years ago, Mars was warmer, and covered with liquid water, which likely carved out valleys like this one.</p><h2>Mawrth Vallis</h2><p>Mawrth Vallis is another valley close by, but it looks very different from our previous spot, thanks to its multicolored layers of clay. These deposits probably formed over millennia as Mars shifted towards a colder, drier climate, and they could provide clues to the history of liquid water and possible ancient life on Mars.</p><h2>Bacquerel Crater</h2><p>The next stop is another place that may have been teeming with life long ago, Bacquerel Crater. It's filled with rocks made of sulfate similar to ones on Earth that form after water evaporates, which has led scientists to suspect that this crater may once have been a massive lake over 160 kilometers wide.</p><h2>Iani Chaos</h2><p>Next stop, Iani Chaos. Now, this is one type of terrain you won't find anywhere on Earth. It's a maze of rugged cliffs and pillar-like hills called mesas that extend for 200 kilometers, and since there is nothing like it on Earth, scientists aren't exactly sure how these unique features formed. Its larger neighbor, Hydraotes Chaos, probably formed in a similar mysterious way. It stretches 350 kilometers, the same distance as New York City to Boston.</p><h2>Valles Marineris</h2><p>West of Hydraotes, we find one Mars's greatest attractions, Valles Marineris. It's the largest canyon in the solar system, running the length of New York to Los Angeles, and plunging four times as deep as the Grand Canyon.</p><h2>Hebes Chasma</h2><p>Following the canyon's main channel north, we reach Hebes Chasma. It's tiny compared to Valles Marineris, but it's worth the trek for a glimpse of the chasma's prominent mesa.</p><h2>Olympus Mons</h2><p>And no trip to Mars would be complete without a visit to Olympus Mons, the tallest volcano in the solar system. It covers a region the size of Arizona. It's three times as tall as Mount Everest, and can comfortably fit all the volcanoes in Hawaii.</p><h2>Promethei Planum</h2><p>Moving south, we'll see Promethei Planum. It's a plane near the South Pole, covered in a sheet of ice nearly one and a half times as thick as the East Antarctic Ice Sheet.</p><h2>Rabe Crater</h2><p>Next, we'll swing around to Rabe Crater. It's covered in giant sand dunes 150 to 200 meters high, almost as tall as the Golden Gate Bridge.</p><h2>Neukum Crater</h2><p>Nearing the end of our tour is one of the oldest regions of Mars that dates back to at least 3.9 billion years ago, Neukum Crater. Scientists think this crater formed from a powerful impact early in Mars's history. In fact, you can still see pockmarks left by the crash.</p><h2>Galle Crater</h2><p>The last crater on our tour is formally named Galle Crater, but many call it Happy Face Crater for obvious reasons.</p><h2>South Pole</h2><p>Finally, we've reached our last stop, the South Pole. In 2018, scientists found evidence of a liquid lake beneath the ice, which could be filled with saltwater.</p><p>But while that's a promising discovery, we still have much to learn about this fascinating world, like whether life once existed in those ancient lakes, or if it still exists today, possibly somewhere underground. But perhaps the biggest question of all, could human life survive here? Maybe in the future, you won't have to imagine your Martian vacation.</p><p><em>Video credit: <a href="http://www.esa.int/ESA">ESA</a>/<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoblCdedNNM">Freie Universitat Berlin Planetary Sciences and Remote Sensing</a>/<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/igo/">CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO</a></em></p>

12 epic sites to visit if you were a tourist on Mars, where canyons are deeper than the Grand Canyon

<p class="source"><span><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oasis_in_Libya.jpg">Sfivat/Wikipedia (public domain)</a></span></p><p class="caption">The Ubari oasis in the deserts of Libya.</p><ul><li><strong>Mars used to have oceans, but began drying out about 4.2 billion years ago.</strong></li><li><strong>However, oasis-like pools of water may have sheltered microscopic alien life.</strong></li><li><strong>New maps show shallow pools were common on Mars for hundreds of millions of years.</strong></li></ul><p>Today Mars is a freeze-dried rock with so little air, you couldn't even gasp if you tried.</p><p>The scene was much different about 4.5 billion years ago: Water covered about 20% of the planet's surface, and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/mars-ocean-mega-tsunami-surface-2016-5">400-foot-tall megatsunamis</a> raced across ancient oceans.</p><p>Alien life might have emerged and thrived on this warm, wet, and dynamic world - that is, until solar storms began to <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-mars-lost-water-atmosphere-solar-wind-2015-11">blow away the air and water</a> some 300 million years later.</p><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/15-217-master.png">NASA</a></span></p>However, new <a href="https://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/sim3359">maps of the planet</a> created by US Geological Survey (USGS) scientists reveal that habitable oases once littered the bottom of Valles Marineris - a canyon system the size of the continental United States - hundreds of millions of years after Mars' oceans evaporated.<p>If groundwater consistently fed these lakes, pools, and puddles, as rock formations hint, it's possible that microbial life took shelter there.</p><p>"There was a huge potential for a habitable environment here, and there's a lot of promise for [microscopic] fossils, perhaps, or some biological signals," <a href="https://astrogeology.usgs.gov/people/chris-okubo" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Chris Okubo</a>, an astrogeologist at USGS and an author of the new maps, told Business Insider.</p><h2>The oases of ancient Mars</h2><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/107489497@N06/10836362493/">Chris Bickham/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)</a></span></p><p class="caption">A desert canyon on Earth that's filled with shallow pools of water.</p><p>On Earth, the typical oasis is fed by underground sources of water, such as a leaky aquifer.</p><p>Okubo and other scientists think the process was similar on Mars.</p><p>"[G]roundwater was abundant and occasionally seeped onto the ground surface, forming pools," Okubo said in <a href="https://www.usgs.gov/news/new-usgs-maps-mars-reveal-ancient-oases" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a USGS press release</a>. "These pools would have been habitable for life, just as they are on Earth."</p><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_83.html">NASA</a></span></p><p class="caption">Valles Marineris: The "Grand Canyon" of Mars that is the size of the continental United States.</p>Okubo told Business Insider that he first saw signs of these ancient oases in a small part of Valles Marineris.<p>The feature is often called the <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_83.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">"Grand Canyon" of Mars</a> - but is about four times longer, 20 times wider, and nearly five times deeper than Earth's famous canyon. Okubo had seen thin layers of sediment in the basin that had piled up, one atop another, over about 500 million years.</p><p>Such layers form when groundwater gurgles to the surface, forming a shallow pool - and a potentially habitable oasis, says Okubo. Over time, grit blows into the water, which responds by pushing more upward to form another pool. More grit then blows in. This cycle repeats itself over eons to form a flat terrain of finely layered sediments.</p><p>Fast-forward a few billion years, and wind erosion has carved into and exposed these layers for scientists like Okubo to detect from space.</p><p>Evidence of such shallow pools on Mars isn't new. However, their newly discovered extent should raise some eyebrows, says Okubo.</p><p>The <a href="https://pubs.usgs.gov/sim/3359/sim3359_pamphlet.pdf">new work</a> by Okubo and his USGS colleagues zoomed out for a wider view of the canyons, yet used incredibly detailed images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE camera to look for signs of ancient shallow pools. That analysis revealed telltale sediment layers over much of the gigantic canyon's basin.</p><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/image-east-candor-sulci-area">NASA, via USGS</a></span></p><p class="caption">The Candor Sulci area of Valles Marineris.</p><p>What's more, the maps hint that shallow pools lasted from about 3.5 billion to 3 billion years ago; in an older yet similar blink of a geological eye, life on Earth <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oldest-fossils-life-hydrothermal-vents-2017-3">may have appeared</a>.</p><p>"We're only seeing the top of the pile," Okubo said. "We don't know what's going on further back in time because we can't see it - it's buried."</p><p>If these shallow pools existed for at least 700 million years earlier - or when the oceans of Mars began to evaporate - they may have bridged a crucial gap for microbial life on the planet.</p><p class="source"><span><a href="http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/gallery/press/opportunity/20120117a.html">NASA/JPL-Caltech</a></span></p><p class="caption">NASA workers stand next to a scale model of Curiosity rover, which the Mars2020 rover will be modeled after.</p>To find out for certain, Okubo says we'll need to send robots or people to dig into the soil or take readings with ground-penetrating radar.<p>"This work argues soundly for a future landing site, whether it's a sample return or a rover," he said. "Anything would be great."</p><p>NASA now has a legal mandate to <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-law-budget-president-trump-2017-3">get people to Mars by 2033</a>, though the first crew of four astronauts may just orbit the world. However, the space agency's Mars 2020 rover is expected to launch in July 2020, meaning it should arrive more than a decade earlier and gather samples for a future return mission.</p><p>Researchers are now studying possible landing sites for the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nuclear-powered-spacecraft-nasa-history-2017-3">nuclear-powered</a> robot. NASA has narrowed the list to <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/scientists-shortlist-three-landing-sites-for-mars-2020">three candidates</a>, though none of them within Valles Marineris.</p><h2>Does Mars still have water?</h2><p><br />Scientists today think Mars still has a water table, though one that must be hidden deep below <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/new-mars-hirise-photos-2016-11">its surface</a>.</p><p>"Although [satellites] in orbit around Mars haven't found any subterranean aquifers, there's a sneaking suspicion we're only seeing the upper kilometer or so, because radar's a challenge," Michael Meyer, a lead scientist at NASA's Astrobiology Institute, told Charles Q. Choi in <a href="https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/news/water-on-mars-the-story-so-far/">an Oct. 2016 story</a> for the space agency.</p><p>Over the past decade scientists believed they'd found a smoking gun for water on Mars: dark streaks in sand on the slopes of dry gullies, called "<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/where-is-the-water-on-mars-2015-10">recurring slope lineae</a>" (RSL), which show up around the same time each season.</p><p class="source"><span>Emmanuel Ocbazghi</span></p><p class="caption">Recurring slope lineae on Marian gully.</p>However, closer looks at more than 100 of these RSL sites revealed <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/gullies-on-mars-not-formed-by-liquid-water-2016-8">no presence of groundwater</a> or its byproducts. (The water <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nasas-big-mars-mystery-announcement-will-be-about-water-2015-9">might come from</a> salts absorbing a little water in the air, then melting any ice that's slowly built up when the climate temporarily warms up.)<p>That's not to say Mars is bone-dry today, and that astronauts won't be able to recover water through drilling or other means, like <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-mars-expatriation-spacex-2016-11">burning methane captured from Martian air</a> with hydrogen fuel.</p><p>The planet's apparent desolation also doesn't make scientists like Okubo give up hope: Detecting fossils that are even billions of years old would verify the existence of extraterrestrial life.</p><p>"I wouldn't be surprised. I suspect there to be life elsewhere in the universe," Okubo said. "This would be an exciting finding, but it wouldn't change my perspective. I don't think life as we know it on Earth is a singular event."</p><h3>More from Dave Mosher:</h3><ul><li><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/russia-mole-missile-nukes-science-debunked-2017-5" rel="nofollow">A physicist says blowing up nuclear weapons in the ocean to trigger tsunamis 'would be completely stupid'</a></li><li><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/shark-attack-death-statistics-2017-5" rel="nofollow">Here's how often Americans really die from shark attacks</a></li><li><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-mars-rover-prototype-seadek-2017-5" rel="nofollow">NASA has been quietly working on a Mars rover concept that looks like a Batmobile</a></li><li><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/tunnel-radioactive-waste-caved-hanford-nuclear-state-washington-2017-5" rel="nofollow">A tunnel full of radioactive waste has caved in at one of the most contaminated nuclear sites in the US</a></li><li><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/hanford-nuclear-site-tunnel-collapse-2017-5" rel="nofollow">A tunnel full of radioactive waste has caved in at one of the most contaminated nuclear sites in the US</a></li></ul>            <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/stephen-hawking-warning-space-aliens-seti-2016-12">Stephen Hawking warned us about contacting aliens, but this astronomer says it's 'too late'</a></h3>                                    Please enable Javascript to watch this video

If aliens lived on Mars, they might have lived in oasis-like pools

<p>Pluto is not the only enigmatic object racing through space at the edge of our solar system. It turns out Pluto's moon Charon is equally mysterious and beautiful:</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full click-to-enlarge"><div><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI" title_caption="" class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/560d7accbd86ef21008be789-960/nh-pluto-charon-v2-10-1-15.jpg"><span class="sprites click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/feature/pluto-s-big-moon-charon-reveals-a-colorful-and-violent-history">NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>On Thursday, NASA released the sharpest, most-detailed photos yet of Pluto's largest moon, which were taken last July by the New Horizons spacecraft as it flew by Pluto and Charon.</p><p>They're a unique pair for many reasons, but these latest photos suggest that the two objects are different geologically.</p><p>Here's the best look yet at Charon's surface:</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full click-to-enlarge"><div><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI" title_caption="" class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/560d6ed19dd7cc1e008be880-960/nh-charon-neutral-bright-release.jpg"><span class="sprites click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/feature/pluto-s-big-moon-charon-reveals-a-colorful-and-violent-history">NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Now, compare that with Pluto:</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full click-to-enlarge"><div><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI" title_caption="" class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/55b29923371d2277018b97ca-960/nh-pluto-in-false-color.jpg"><span class="sprites click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source"><span>NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>While Pluto has the iconic heart-shaped region stamped across its southern hemisphere, Charon has a decidedly different feature across its face: A gigantic, 1,000-mile-long canyon.</p><p>That's four times longer than the Grand Canyon!</p><p>"It looks like the entire crust of Charon has been split open," John Spencer, the deputy lead for the Geology, Geophysics Imaging team at the Southwest Research Institute, said in a <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/feature/pluto-s-big-moon-charon-reveals-a-colorful-and-violent-history">NASA release</a>. "With respect to its size relative to Charon, this feature is much like the vast Valles Marineris canyon system on Mars."</p><p>Valles Marineris is the second-largest system of canyons and is beat out, size-wise, only by the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rift_valley">rift valleys</a> on Earth.</p><p>Here's a close-up of a section on Charon:</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full click-to-enlarge"><div><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI" title_caption="" class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/560d7b099dd7cc1b008bea3d-960/nh-charon-detail-9-29-15.jpg"><span class="sprites click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/feature/pluto-s-big-moon-charon-reveals-a-colorful-and-violent-history">NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Evidence of this giant canyon suggests that Charon had a "surprisingly complex and violent history," NASA wrote.</p><p>What led to this giant scar in Charon is up for debate, but scientists are considering one theory.</p><p>"The team is discussing the possibility that an internal water ocean could have frozen long ago, and the resulting volume change could have led to Charon cracking open, allowing water-based lavas to reach the surface at that time," Paul Schenk, a New Horizons team member from the Lunar and Planetary Institute, said in the NASA release.</p><p>Scientists had initially expected Charon to look much like Earth's moon, with a relatively large number of craters but few other features. Instead, they have discovered a giant canyon in addition to mountains, landslides, and variations in surface color that depict a more diverse world than our moon.</p><p>The New Horizons spacecraft is now millions of miles from Pluto and its moons, but it continues to transmit invaluable photos and other scientific data about Pluto and Charon.</p><p>The more we see, the more questions that seem to arise, but they are now the right sort of question that will ultimately help us nail down what made this couple so geologically different from one another.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/pluto-charon-love-story-hopeless-romantic-planet-nasa-new-horion-2015-9">Pluto and its moon Charon have something that doesn't exist anywhere else in the solar system</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="dpN2ZudzrH_ry0UkEnNf2WpZYP4qtqEk" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

Scientists have discovered a mysterious feature on this distant moon that's 4 times larger than the Grand Canyon

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>In the highly-anticipate sci-fi drama "The Martian" - premiering in theaters nationwide Friday - Matt Damon plays Mark Watney - a NASA astronaut who is marooned on Mars.<p>Watney is a crew member on the Ares 3 mission that touches down and sets up camp on a region of Mars called Acidalia Planitia.</p><p>Though Acidalia Planitia is flat compared with its surroundings, the terrain is more geologically diverse than the film depicts.</p><p>In fact, it would be too hazardous, <a href="http://www.uahirise.org/ESP_026086_2115">NASA says</a>, for Watney to drive around on it as much as he does in "The Martian."</p><p>The film is based on the best-selling novel by Andy Weir, who recently gave NASA the exact coordinate of his hero's location and requested they take a picture of the real thing. NASA obliged.</p><p>Here's the exact spot - at the very center of this photo - of the real Ares 3 landing site in Acidalia Planitia on Mars: </p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Acidalia Planitia is a relatively flat region on Mars, located in the northern hemisphere and just north of one of the largest canyons in the entire solar system, Valles Marineris:<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Changing sand ripples - like the ones shown below - indicate that Acidalia Planitia can be a windy place at certain times of the year:<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>These amazing photos were taken by the $40 million <a href="http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/multimedia/images/?s=26">HiRISE camera</a> on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been orbiting Mars since 2006. The camera has taken numerous photos that reveal the presence of <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-hirise-photos-of-mars-2015-9">giant sand dunes, towering dust devils, and monster canyons</a> on Mars that attest to this planet's astounding geological diversity.<p>The sand dunes in Acidalia Planitia are often found at the bottoms of eroded crater, like the ones shown below:</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>But not all of the craters are eroded. Here's a rather large, young crater in the region, that HiRISE snapped in exquisite detail, shown below.<p>These photos from HiRISE have false coloring to highlight distinct Martian features, like the ejected materials in this crater. To our human eyes, this crater would look more grayish-red than blue:</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Now that you know more about the home-base of "The Martian," check out the trailer below, or on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ue4PCI0NamI">YouTube</a>:<p><div></div></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/science-the-martian-matt-damon-mark-watney-2015-10">9 ways Matt Damon sciences the s--- out of Mars in 'The Martian'</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="NldnJ2dzo6kgT7ny0Q1ZQ9HsJcvLZBjO" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

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