Although a larger one could always be discovered, it seems difficult to surpass Valles Marineris , a deep scar on the red planet that is considered the largest canyon in the Solar System. Compared to him, our Grand Canyon of the Colorado is a mere scratch.
And it is that this giant measures more than 4,000 kilometers long by 200 wide , dimensions more or less comparable to those of the country of Chile. In addition, it reaches a depth of ten kilometers, and is ten times longer and five times deeper than the Grand Canyon of the Colorado.
The European Space Agency's Mars Express probe obtained the data that made it possible to reconstruct the image of the canyon, which is located in the same region as Olympus Mons , the largest volcano in the Solar System. Experts think that the canyon's formation could be related to the Tharsis bulge. As the Tharsis region swelled from the accumulation of lava during the planet's first billions of years, the surrounding crust stretched, cracked and collapsed, giving rise to the impressive Valles Marineris pit system.
