Introduction to the Special Issue on faulting and fault-related processes on planetary surfaces

Faults have been documented on nearly every solid surface in the solar system, from asteroids to moons to planets, and they provide a remarkable suite of data sets and critical problems for investigation and analysis by structural geologists. The lack of significant atmospheres on Mercury, the Moon, and most outer planet satellites, along with slow erosion rates and a lack of crustal recycling and Earth-like plate tectonics on most planetary bodies, allows for excellent preservation of fault scarp morphologies for study of fault populations and developmental sequences.