Olympic Mons Of Mars Is The Highest Volcanic Mountain In Our Solar System

Olympic Mons Of Mars Is The Highest Volcanic Mountain In Our Solar System
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Olympus Mons of Mars, located in the Tharsis region, is one of the most prominent volcanic mountains in the entire Solar System. It is the highest mountain among all the mountains of our Solar System’s planets, including the Earth. The Olympus Mons is about three times higher than Mount Everest.

Mars is holding the highest mountain in the Solar System

Our neighbor planet, Mars, with a reddish surface due to the presence of iron oxide dust, has the honor of housing the highest volcanic mountain in our Solar System – Olympus Mons.

This volcanic mountain is three times higher than Earth’s Mount Everest as it reaches to 22 kilometers in height. Also, the Olympus Mons has a base of 624 km in diameter and, at its peak, there is a caldera formed by several craters of 80 km in diameter.

Olympus Mons, as well as others volcanoes on Mars, is the result of thousands of basaltic lava flows, which were poured on the surface over a long period of time and accumulated around the base of the mountain.

Olympus Mons is dead as it is the whole Red Planet

The volcanoes of Mars are larger or more massive than those of the Earth since they had a lot of eruptive activity. Olympus Mons, the highest volcanic mountain in our Solar System, reached these proportions due to the lower gravity of Mars. This, in turn, is due to the fact that the mass of Mars is nine times smaller and its diameter is 0.5 times smaller than that of Earth.

The study of Mars volcanism tells us that the Olympus Mons can exceed 1,000 million years without erupting not even once.

Thus, the Mars can be considered a dead planet since there is hardly registered any geological activity and the vast majority of Mars volcanoes are inactive.

All information about Olympus Mons comes from photographs taken by different probes sent by NASA and ESA, which have mapped the surface of Mars since Mariner 9 in 1971, which was the first one to orbit the planet.


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