Martian Upheaval Noted By Mars Express

A new analysis of impact cratering data from Mars reveals the planet has undergone a series of global volcanic upheavals. These violent episodes spewed lava and water onto the surface, sculpting the landscape that the European Space Agency‘s Mars Express looks down on. Using images from the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on Mars Express, Gerhard Neukum, Freie Universitat Berlin, Germany, and colleagues are discovering the history of the Red Planet’s geological activity. “We can now determine the ages of large regions and resurfacing events on the planet,” says Neukum. Resurfacing occurs when volcanic eruptions spread lava across the planet’s surface. This work has suggested that the sculpting of the Martian surface has not proceeded in a steady fashion, as it does on Earth. Rather, the team have discovered that Mars has been wracked by violent volcanic activity five times in the past, after the early supposedly warmer and wetter phase, more than 3.8 thousand million years ago. In between these episodes, the planet has been relatively calm.