The Libya Montes are a highland terrain on

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. It is also known as the "Red Planet", because of its orange-red appearance. Mars is a desert-like rocky planet with a tenuous carbon dioxide () atmosphere. At the average surface level the atmosph ...

up-lifted by the giant impact that created the Isidis basin to the north. During 1999, this region became one of the top two that were being considered for the canceled

Mars Surveyor 2001 Lander The Mars Surveyor 2001 project was a multi-part Mars exploration mission intended as a follow-up to Mars Surveyor '98. After the two probes of the 1998 project, Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander, were both lost, NASA's "better, faster, ...

. The Isidis basin is very ancient. Thus, the Libya Montes that form the southern Isidis basin rim contain some of the oldest rocks available at the Martian surface, and a landing in this region might potentially provide information about conditions on early Mars. After they formed by the Isidis impact, the Libya Montes were subsequently modified by a large variety of processes, including fluvial activity, wind erosion and impact cratering. In particular, precipitation induced

surface runoff Surface runoff (also known as overland flow or terrestrial runoff) is the unconfined flow of water over the ground surface, in contrast to ''channel runoff'' (or ''stream flow''). It occurs when excess rainwater, stormwater, meltwater, or other ...

and groundwater seepage resulted in the formation of fluvial landforms, i.e., dense valley networks,Catalog Page for PIA02396
/ref> broad and elongated valleys, delta deposits, alluvial fans, open-basin paleolakes and coastlines. Crater size - frequency distribution measurements ("crater counting") revealed that the majority of valleys were formed early in Martian history (more than 3.7 billion years ago, Late Noachian). However, recent studies show that the formation of valleys continued throughout the Middle Ages of Mars (Hesperian period) and stopped 3.1 billion years ago in the Late Hesperian. File:Libya Montes - THEMIS image.JPG, Libya Montes in Iapygia quadrangle with valley networks, as seen by

THEMIS In Greek mythology and religion, Themis (; ) is the goddess and personification of justice, divine order, law, and custom. She is one of the twelve Titan children of Gaia and Uranus, and the second wife of Zeus. She is associated with oracles a ...

Libya Montes "face"

Libya Montes has a face-like formation that appears even when viewed at different angles and with different sun angles. It can be found in the

Mars Global Surveyor ''Mars Global Surveyor'' (MGS) was an American Robotic spacecraft, robotic space probe developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It launched November 1996 and collected data from 1997 to 2006. MGS was a global mapping mission that examined ...

, MOC narrow-angle image M02-03051, locate
here (MSSS)
o

Crop
. Also in HiRISE imag
ESP 018368 1830non-map projected
and ESP 018223 1830a stereo pair that allows 3D terrain data to be generated. Like the more famous Face on Mars, it is an example of

pareidolia Pareidolia (; ) is the tendency for perception to impose a meaningful interpretation on a nebulous stimulus (physiology), stimulus, usually visual, so that one detects an object, pattern, or meaning where there is none. Pareidolia is a specific bu ...

References

External links

"Elephant" face
Mountains on Mars Iapygia quadrangle {{Mars-stub