Planet Mars: 'Foggy' Valles Marineris & Noctis Labyrinthus | Europe's Mars Express
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The largest canyon in the Solar System cuts a wide swath across the face of Mars. Named Valles Marineris, the grand valley extends over 3,000 kilometers long, spans as much as 600 kilometers across, and delves as much as 8 kilometers deep. By comparison, the Earth’s Grand Canyon in Arizona, USA is 800 kilometers long, 30 kilometers across, and 1.8 kilometers deep. The origin of the Valles Marineris remains unknown, although a leading hypothesis holds that it started as a crack billions of years ago as the planet cooled. Recently, several geologic processes have been identified in the canyon.
Nestled between the colossal martian ‘Grand Canyon’ (Valles Marineris) and the tallest volcanoes in the Solar System (the Tharsis region) lies Noctis Labyrinthus—a vast system of deep and steep valleys that stretches out for around 1,190 km (roughly the length of Italy here on Earth).
Mars Express has now been in space for two decades, despite a planned initial lifetime of just 687 Earth days. It has achieved its aforementioned aims and revealed a wealth of knowledge about Mars in that time, making it undeniably one of the most successful missions ever sent to the Red Planet.
The orbiter will continue its study of Mars until at least the end of 2026, with an indicative extension from January 1, 2027 to December 31, 2028 to support the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)-led Mars Moons eXploration (MMX) mission (Japan), followed by two years of post-operations.
Mars Express has conducted data relay for seven rovers and landing platforms (more information), and enabled scientific collaboration with a further five orbiters.
The past 20 years of observations from Mars Express have solidified our picture of Mars as a once-habitable planet, with warmer and wetter epochs that may have been oases for ancient life. This is a monumental shift from our previous view of the planet, which characterized it as an eternally cold and arid world.
Mars Express has identified and mapped signs of past water across Mars—from minerals that only form in the presence of water to water-carved valleys, groundwater systems, and ponds lurking below ground—and traced its influence and prevalence through martian history. It has peered deep into the martian atmosphere, mapping how gases (water, ozone, methane) are distributed and escape to space, and watching as dust is whipped up from the surface into the air. The mission has seen giant dust storms engulf the planet, creating familiar clouds like those we see on Earth, and tracked rare ultraviolet auroras.
The orbiter has seen signs of recent and episodic volcanism and tectonics, and explored the planet’s unique surface features, mapping 98.8% of Mars and creating thousands of 3D images of impact craters, canyons (including the Valles Marineris system), the planet’s icy poles, immense volcanoes and more.
North is approx down
Instrument: ESA Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC)
Orbit: 17508
Date: 2017-10-30 T18:09:05.764Z
Raw Data:
HH508_0000_RE3.IMG
HH508_0000_BL3.IMG
Notes: Green filter has been created mixing Red and Blue channels
Image Processsing: Andrea Luck
Release Date: June 15, 2025
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