Topographical overview of the Chalcoporos Rupes region
Topographical overview of the Chalcoporos Rupes region
The Chalcoporos Rupes region is located in the southern Martian highlands, approximately 1000 kilometres to the west of the Hellas impact basin and a few hundred kilometres southwest of the Neukum Crater (top right), which was named last year in honour of the ‘father’ of the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC), Gerhard Neukum, who worked at DLR and the Freie Universität Berlin. The region is typical of the Martian highlands, which lie in the planet’s southern hemisphere, with countless impact craters, of which some of them are heavily weathered. This indicates that the region is very old – over three billion years. The term ‘Rupes’ (meaning escarpment) reflects the fact that tectonic forces have stretched the Martian crust here. This has resulted in elongated fracture structures that are clearly visible on the regional overview, stretching from southwest to northeast. The DLR-operated HRSC on board ESA’s Mars Express orbiter imaged the area on 3 January 2019 from an altitude of approximately 300 kilometres, during orbit 18,983. The image resolution is 13 metres per pixel.
