Beagle Rupes is an escarpment

Escarpment

An escarpment is a steep slope or long cliff that occurs from erosion or faulting and separates two relatively level areas of differing elevations.-Description and variants:...

 on Mercury

Mercury (planet)

Mercury is the innermost and smallest planet in the Solar System, orbiting the Sun once every 87.969 Earth days. The orbit of Mercury has the highest eccentricity of all the Solar System planets, and it has the smallest axial tilt. It completes three rotations about its axis for every two orbits...

, one of the highest and longest yet seen. It was discovered in 2008 when MESSENGER

MESSENGER

The MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging space probe is a robotic NASA spacecraft in orbit around the planet Mercury. The spacecraft was launched aboard a Delta II rocket in August 2004 to study the chemical composition, geology, and magnetic field of Mercury...

 made its first flyby of the planet. It has an arcuate shape and is about 600 km long. The scarp is a surface manifestation of a thrust fault

Thrust fault

A thrust fault is a type of fault, or break in the Earth's crust across which there has been relative movement, in which rocks of lower stratigraphic position are pushed up and over higher strata. They are often recognized because they place older rocks above younger...

, which formed when the planet contracted as its interior cooled.

Beagle Rupes consists of three segments. The central segment trends in the north–south direction and crosscuts the elliptically shaped Sveinsdóttir crater

Sveinsdóttir (crater)

Sveinsdóttir is a large impact crater on Mercury. Its dimensions are .Sveinsdóttir crater superimposed by Beagle Rupes is a distinctive feature on Mercury's landscape. Unusually elliptical in shape, the crater was produced by the impact of an object that hit Mercury's surface obliquely...

. The dimensions of the latter are . The floor of Sveinsdóttir was flooded by the smooth plains material and deformed by wrinkle-ridge

Wrinkle-ridge

A wrinkle ridge is a type of feature commonly found on lunar maria. These features are low, sinuous ridges formed on the mare surface that can extend for up to several hundred kilometers. Wrinkle ridges are tectonic features created when the basaltic lava first cooled and contracted...

s before the appearance of Beagle Rupes. The maximum relief within the crater is about 0.8 km. To the south of Sveinsdóttir the scarp turns to the south–east. A 27 km diameter crater is superposed on this segment. To the north of Sveinsdóttir the scarp turns to north–east completing a large arc. This segment of Beagle Rupes crosscuts and deforms a small 17 km diameter crater. The relief in this places reaches 1.5 km. The scarp appears to be a young feature, which postdates the emplacement of the smooth plans and formation of the majority of impact craters.

Beagle Rupes is named after the HMS Beagle

HMS Beagle

HMS Beagle was a Cherokee-class 10-gun brig-sloop of the Royal Navy. She was launched on 11 May 1820 from the Woolwich Dockyard on the River Thames, at a cost of £7,803. In July of that year she took part in a fleet review celebrating the coronation of King George IV of the United Kingdom in which...

, a ship made famous by Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...

.