Olympus Mons
Olympus Mons is the tallest volcano in the Solar System, about 22 km high and 600 km wide. Fly over it and drive its slopes in 3D at real scale.
- Location
- 18.7° N, 133.8° W, Tharsis region
- Height
- about 22 km above the Martian average surface level
- Width
- about 600 km across
- Type
- shield volcano with a caldera about 80 km wide
Olympus Mons is the tallest volcano known in the Solar System. It rises about 22 km above the average Martian surface level, more than twice the height of Mount Everest above sea level, and it is so wide that its slopes are surprisingly gentle. Standing on them, you would not see the summit: it would be hidden below the horizon.
It is a shield volcano, built by countless lava flows, like the volcanoes of Hawaii but on a far larger scale. Mars has no moving tectonic plates, so a hotspot could keep pouring lava onto the same place for a very long time.
What to look for
- The caldera. A set of overlapping collapse craters at the summit, about 80 km across in total.
- The cliffs. The base of the volcano is ringed by steep scarps several kilometres high.
- The Tharsis neighbours. Three more giant volcanoes, Arsia, Pavonis and Ascraeus Mons, line up to the south-east.
Visiting Olympus Mons in Trawers
No mission has landed here, so there is no default landing site. Fly over it with the shuttle, or open the map, pick a custom landing spot on its flank and try to drive to the summit. At real scale, the climb from the base to the caldera is hundreds of kilometres long.