Adamas Labyrinthus in Mars

Adamas Labyrinthus color image. Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin

The adamas Labyrinthus is a system of depressions and elevations which are part of real labyrinth that was imaged by the ESA's space probe Mars Express on June 21 of this year 2016.

This image is part of a region called Adamas Labyrinthus, located on Utopia Planitia, which is in the Northern Lowlands of Mars, in this zone there are a series of blocks of different sizes and shapes in size from 5 to 20 km across and are separated by cross-cutting troughs with widths of up to 2 km.

This patron remains us of certain marine environments observed in some offshore locations on Earth, supporting the idea that the scene here results from the deposition of fine-grained sediments in an ocean. 

A number of hypotheses have been formulated to explain this formation of these polygons and the depressions that surrounds them, including collapse under gravity, the expulsion of fluid from the porous sediments as they are being compacted, low friction between the sediments resulting in mass wasting, and local tectonic activity extending the blocks apart. The underlying topography of the surface below may also play a role. 

Adamas Labyrinthus anaglyph. Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin

One idea for the scene shown here on Mars is that sediment slurries were deposited during catastrophic flooding on an ice-rich surface, and contracted into the polygons as the sediments were compacted and expelled their fluids. 

And after this, the tectonic activity and the gradual sublimation of buried ices could have caused gradual widening and deepening of the troughs between the giant polygons. 

Icy material certainly played a role in this region’s appearance at some point: the larger impact craters show characteristic “pancake” debris blankets, which indicate heating and melting of a subsurface ice layer at the time of the impact. 

In addition, some of the troughs show dark deposits, which may be ash layers being revealed from below a cover of dust-covered ice as Sun-facing slopes are gently heated. 

Adamas Labyrinthus color coded digital terrain model. Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin

The ground resolution of this image is about 15 m per pixel and the images are centered at 39ºN / 101ºE. For more images and details of this region, see the associated image release by the DLR German Aerospace Agency and by Freie Universität Berlin on 8 September. 

Sources: ESA, Aerospace German Center, University of Berlin