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Sharp New Images of Martian Volcano
By Andrew Bridges
Pasadena Bureau Chief
posted: 07:03 pm ET
21 April 2000
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<a href=mailto:abridges@space PASADENA, Calif. -- A newly released NASA image gives viewers a high-flying peek at the top of Olympus Mons, a martian behemoth that is the largest known volcano in the solar system. 
A 57-mile long strip of Olympus Mons summit, highlighted here, has been photographed in crisp new detail by Mars Global Surveyor. Click the image to the right to view it in detail. The image, acquired by the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor satellite, shows a 57-mile (91-kilometer) long swath of terrain across the dusty, crater-pocked calderas that lie at the shield volcanos summit. Olympus Mons (Mount Olympus), stands 15 miles (24 kilometers) high, or about three times the height of Mount Everest. Unlike Everest, Olympus Mons is enormously wide, about 340 miles (550 kilometers) across, giving it slow-rising slopes that would make for a gentle, albeit time-consuming, climb. The giant mountains summit is punctuated by a series of at least a half-dozen nested calderas, collapsed formations formed when hot magma within the volcano withdrew. Similar features can be found, on a much smaller scale, in volcanoes in Hawaii. NASAs Mars Global Surveyor was launched on November 7, 1996 and entered into orbit around Mars on September 11, 1997. It is currently NASAs only functioning spacecraft at Mars. However, a second orbiter, scheduled for launch in the spring of 2001, will join it.
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