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The Red Planet, Mars, fascinates us like no other celestial body. We have yet to visit the most Earth-like world in the solar system in person, but since the Sixties a small armada of space probes have poked and prodded the dusty Martian surface.
And, as these astonishing images show, they have taken the most spectacular close-up pictures while orbiting the planet. Because Mars has so little air, and certainly no substantial running water and no vegetation, the processes of weathering and erosion, so important on Earth, operate differently on Mars.
The result is that Mars is covered with spectacular, near-vertical cliffs, huge rubblestrewn plains and vertiginous crater edges. Future tourists, if there are any, will be able to gaze over colossal canyons - one of which, the 2,500-mile-long Valles Marineris, would swallow our Grand Canyon.
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