NATS 1570 Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Tharsis, Valles Marineris, Olympus Mons
15 Apr 2020
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Document Summary
Mars has a surface with a number of interesting features. Mars" interior is probably very similar to earth"s, with a core, mantle and crust. The core is either a slightly smaller iron core, or slightly larger iron and sulfur core. There may still be heat in the interior of mars, but not enough to create any kind of currently active volcanoes. However, the interior must have been much hotter in the past as there are clearly inactive old volcanoes of massive size on the surface of the planet. The crust of mars is clearly divided into distinct hemispheres. The southern region tends to be at a higher elevation and is much more cratered than the northern hemisphere. One possibility is a massive impact that removed part of the northern crust. Also speculated is that was not a single impact but several that resulted in this variation between the hemispheres. Another possible mechanism is erosion by water.
