Evidence of Wind & Water Erosion on the Surface of Mars

The "Canals" of Mars? No. But our forefathers weren't all that incorrect...

As it turns out, the astronomers and fiction writers of the past centuries would have been remarkably accurate had they written about the ancient rivers, canyons, and gullies of Mars, instead of "canals". Within the past twenty years, the acquisition of abundant high-resolution photographic imagery from low orbit has yielded compelling evidence of the impact of wind and water erosion on the Martian surface. Public access to this intriguing photographic database has been made easy via the Internet, thanks to the hard-working scientists at NASA, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Malin Space Science Systems, among others. From these public domain sources, Vision Exploration has collected a few compelling images that illustrate the inexorable forces of erosion that have reshaped much of the surface of the Red Planet. From a geological perspective, Mars represents a compelling subject to study, free from the camouflaging cover of vegetation, urban areas, and clouds (aside from the occasional dust storm). Regardless of locale, the erosional forces that reshape the surface of the planets and moons in our Solar System are universal in nature, and fascinating to observe.

Provided below is a photographic gallery of selected Mars images. To study more images of the surface of Mars, we highly recommend the Mars Global Surveyor / Mars Orbiter Camera website, from which these images were first obtained.  You will find that website to contain a comprehensive library of Mars photographs. All of the images shown are in the public domain. Simply click on a "thumbnail" to view a full-sized image; then click the "Back to Photo Gallery" button at the bottom of each image to return to the Photo Gallery shown below, or simply scroll up or down through the Photo Gallery until you find the picture that you want to observe.