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PIA03818: Floor of Juventae Chasma
Juventae Chasma is an enormous box canyon which opens to the north and forms the outflow channel Maja Vallis. This image from NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft captures a portion of the western floor of Juventae Chasma and shows a wide variety of landforms.
 Target Name:  Mars
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  2001 Mars Odyssey 
 Spacecraft:  2001 Mars Odyssey
 Instrument:  THEMIS 
 Product Size:  1239 x 3043 pixels (w x h) 
 Produced By:  Arizona State University 
 Producer ID:  20020530A  
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA03818.tif (1.515 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA03818.jpg (321.1 kB)  

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:


(Released 30 May 2002)
Juventae Chasma is an enormous box canyon (250 km X 100 km) which opens to the north and forms the outflow channel Maja Vallis. Most Martian outflow channels such as Maja, Kasei, and Ares Valles begin at point sources such as box canyons and chaotic terrain and then flow unconfined into a basin region. This image captures a portion of the western floor of Juventae Chasma and shows a wide variety of landforms. Conical hills, mesas, buttes and plateaus of layered material dominate this scene and seem to be "swimming" in vast sand sheets. The conical hills have a spur and gully topography associated with them while the flat topped buttes and mesas do not. This may be indicative of different materials that compose each of these landforms or it could be that the flat-topped layer has been completely eroded off of the conical hills thereby exposing a different rock type. Both the conical hills and flat-topped buttes and mesas have extensive scree slopes (heaps of eroded rock and debris). Ripples, which are inferred to be dunes, can also be seen amongst the hills. No impact craters can be seen in this image, indicating that the erosion and transport of material down the canyon wall and across the floor is occurring at a relatively rapid rate, so that any craters that form are rapidly buried or eroded.
Image Credit:
NASA/JPL/Arizona State University

Image Addition Date:
2002-06-17