Snaking Scar Photographed on Mars is Larger Than the Grand Canyon

The Red Planet may not be visited by humans for another decade or so, but that doesn’t stop us from learning more about its surface, and the geology of  the surface.

The 20 year-old Mars Express Orbiter, operated by the European Space Agency, recently snapped some amazing images of the surface, that include this 600-km-long (373 miles long) feature known as a ‘graben’: which is a ditch-like groove with steep walls on either side.

Named Aganippe Fossa, the scar cuts across the lower side of one of Mars’s largest volcanoes, Arsia Mons. We can only imagine what it’d look like in person, this massive canyon on a foreign planet.

Seen in three different wavelengths below, the feature is massive, over 1.3 times longer than the Grand Canyon.