Mars Pathfinder landed in the Oxia Palus quadrangle at 19°08′N 33°13′W / 19.13°N 33.22°W / 19.13; -33.22, on July 4, 1997, at the intersection Tiu Valles and Ares Vallis.

Besides Galilei and da Vinci, some of the people who discovered the atom and radiation are honored there: Curie, Becquerel, and Rutherford.

[2] Mawrth Vallis was strongly considered as a landing site for NASA's Curiosity rover, the Mars Science Laboratory.

The exact location proposed for this landing is 22.16 N and 342.05 E.[4] The Mawrth Vallis region is well studied with more than 40 papers published in peer-reviewed publications.

[19] Recently, scientists have found strong evidence for a lake located in the Oxia Palus quadrangle that received drainage from Shalbatana Vallis.

The study, carried out with HiRISE images, indicates that water formed a 30-mile-long canyon that opened up into a valley, deposited sediment, and created a delta.

In general the rocks show a dark gray color with patches of red dust or weathered appearance on their surfaces.

[27] Results of Mars Pathfinder's Alpha Proton X-ray Spectrometer indicated that some rocks in the Oxia Palus quadrangle are like Earth's andesites.

[27][28][29] By taking multiple images of the sky at different distances from the sun, scientists were able to determine that size of the particles in the pink haze was about 1 micrometer in radius.

Since the weakest magnet did not attract any soil, it was concluded that the airborne dust did not contain pure magnetite or one type of maghemite.

A chaotic region can be recognized by a rat's nest of mesas, buttes, and hills, chopped through with valleys which in places look almost patterned.

[32] Chaotic terrain occurs in numerous locations on Mars, and always gives the strong impression that something abruptly disturbed the ground.

[33] One generally accepted view for the formation of large outflow channels is that they were formed by catastrophic floods of water released from giant groundwater reservoirs.

One commonly cited example is the Channeled Scabland of Washington State; it was formed by the breakout of water from the Pleistocene Lake Missoula.

[34] Research, published in January 2010, suggests that Mars had lakes, each around 20 km wide, along parts of the equator, in the Oxia Palus quadrangle.

Volcanoes would have released gases that thickened the atmosphere for a temporary period, trapping more sunlight and making it warm enough for liquid water to exist.

About 280 kilometers (170 mi) across, Aram lies in a region called Margaritifer Terra, where many water-carved channels show that floods poured out of the highlands onto the northern lowlands ages ago.

The Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) on the Mars Odyssey orbiter found gray crystalline hematite on the floor of Aram.

Hematite is an iron-oxide mineral that can precipitate when ground water circulates through iron-rich rocks, whether at normal temperatures or in hot springs.

The floor of Aram contains huge blocks of collapsed, or chaotic, terrain that formed when water or ice was catastrophically removed.

Elsewhere on Mars, the release of groundwater produced massive floods that eroded the large channels seen in Ares Vallis and similar outflow valleys.

In Aram Chaos, however, the released water stayed mostly within the crater's ramparts, eroding only a small, shallow outlet channel in the eastern wall.

At times, the top layer may be resistant to erosion and will form a feature called a mensa, the Latin word for table.

Today, the tilt (or obliquity) of Mars is low, so the poles are the coldest places on the planet, while the equator is the warmest.

When carbon dioxide moves from the poles, the atmospheric pressure increases, maybe causing a difference in the ability of winds to transport and deposit sand.

This study was done using stereo topographic maps obtained by processing data from the high-resolution camera onboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Faults can be very significant, as the break in the rock is a focus for erosion and, more importantly, can allow fluids containing dissolved minerals to rise, then be deposited.

In Vernal Crater on a dark part of the floor, two light-toned, elliptical structures closely resemble hot springs on the Earth.

It is considered the most recent crater of its size on Mars, and has been identified as the probable source of the shergottite meteorites collected on Earth.

Spacecraft cameras showed that floods of water broke through dams, carved deep valleys, eroded grooves into bedrock, and traveled thousands of kilometers.