Where is the largest volcano in the solar system
Olympus Mons: Largest Volcano in the Solar System | The Case for Mars 35
in the year 1971 NASA sent the Mariner 9
spacecraft to orbit around the planet
Mars and upon arrival they were welcomed
with a global dust storm which hindered
their ability to take pictures of the
surface however as scientists patiently
waited for the dust to settle they
quickly realized that there was a
mountain that was peaking out above the
dust clouds and later they quickly
realized that this wasn't actually a
mountain at all but rather the tallest
volcano in the entire solar system
so how massive is this object and could
we ever send a robotic mission to
explore it let's talk about that now
this volcano was given the name Olympus
Mons and that name is really fitting
because Olympus comes from the term an
ancient Greek mythology referring to the
home of the 12 olympian gods now in
order to actually classify how tall this
object is we must first understand that
it's pretty wide as well in fact it's
550 kilometers wide which is
approximately the size of the country
France or the state Arizona which is
incredibly massive then if you want to
classify its actual height well do you
compare it to the surrounding region or
the average elevation on Mars because if
you compare it to the surrounding region
then it's 22 kilometers higher than that
but then if you compare it to the
average elevation of Mars its 27
kilometers higher than that which is a
little bit more than twice the height of
Mount Everest that just puts things into
perspective on how absolutely massive
this volcano truly is but that's not all
if you were on the peak of Olympus Mons
you would actually be incredibly close
to just being in the vacuum of space the
atmospheric pressure at this altitude is
only 12% of the typical atmospheric
pressure on Mars meaning you're only a
couple kilometers or a couple miles away
from being in space which is pretty
incredible to think about that this
volcano can reach so tall but that's not
all the volcano itself is actually a
shield volcano and when we think about
this here on earth they have this
dome-like shape and aren't very peak
like like we might think of a mountain
but rather a gradual hill however this
dome volcano does sit on its own plateau
of a sense
the some of the cliffs that are on the
side of this are similar to that of
cliffs that we see maybe on the beaches
are on the west coast of the United
States where the cliffs could be maybe
tens or in some places a hundred meters
tall however for olympus mons it's a
little bit bigger in some locations it's
not that these cliffs can be kilometers
tall meaning you have a cliff being the
beginning of a dome volcano which is
pretty impressive so now that we know
that this volcano is truly massive and
in fact the largest volcano in the
entire solar system and the largest
planetary mountain in the solar system
this leads to the question of how did it
get so big and there are multiple
answers for this the first one being
that the Martian gravity being lower
than Earth's gravity allows for magma to
get up to the surface much easier and
then spread out along the surface when
it grows this massive volcano in
addition Mars doesn't have tectonic
plates like Earth does in fact it's
rather still there for underneath the
surface of Mars there might be this very
hot segment that is eventually getting
lava or magma to the surface but then on
earth we have plates that are slowly
changing or going under or over each
other therefore what ends up happening
on earth is we have some of this ring of
volcanoes or chains of them instead of
having just one or two massive volcano
like we see on Mars now speaking of the
fact that since it doesn't have these
tectonic plates and it's building this
massive volcano it's actually not by
itself in this region a region called
thoris and as you can see by this
topographic map it's actually reddish
white in these regions and there are
multiple of these very large shield
volcanoes in this region now because of
all these studies that have been looking
at these volcanoes there have been a lot
of different images as you see now of
Olympus Mons in fact you can see
different lava flows or channels where
lava used to flow and you can also see
on the top of Olympus Mons there are
multiple Cabrera's or the caps to the
volcanoes after previous eruptions now
then this leads to the question of is
Olympus Mons active and when we think
about active the terminology here on
earth means that the volcano itself is
actually erupted within the last 10,000
years
however for Mars 10,000 years is a very
short timeframe
in fact it's not the last eruption of
olympus mons happened around a hundred
million years ago but that doesn't
necessarily mean that it can never erupt
again
in fact some geologists do in fact
believe that it isn't extinct and that
there could be an eruption in the future
but most likely not in the next thousand
or even million years just because of
how rarely these eruptions could occur
but it could make a drastic difference
of what the surface of Mars looks like
or at least the region around Olympus
Mons so seeing such an event would be
truly incredible but I highly doubt
something like that would happen in our
lifetime now all this information about
this incredible location on the surface
of Mars has you wondering can we send a
rover to land on the top of Olympus Mons
and take some incredible pictures and
get a lot of great data about volcanic
activity on Mars and the answer to that
is unfortunately no I have an entire
video talking about how exactly we land
on Mars and if you remember early in
this video I said that the peak of
olympus mons only has around twelve
percent of the average atmosphere of
mars itself meaning it's almost in the
vacuum of space and therefore when
trying to land something on mars we try
and utilize as much atmospheric drag as
we can so that we don't have to use as
much fuel to slowly ease us down to the
surface therefore laning something on
the peak of Olympus month would take an
incredible amount of fuel and therefore
wouldn't necessarily be a great idea and
then you may ask well why don't we just
lay in a rover maybe on the outskirts of
olympus mons and then climb to the top
but remember this thing is 550
kilometers wide and you'd have to climb
around 22 kilometers tall not including
the kilometer high cliffs and the
different channels you'd have to travel
through and all that with a rover would
practically and be impossible when you
look at the Curiosity rover which has
only been able to climb a couple hundred
meters over the course of maybe five
years so then that might lead you to
your final question of can we send the
crew to the base of Olympus Mons and set
them on a journey of one of the greatest
mountaineering experience of all of
humanity and the answer to that is well
theoretically yes I mean we haven't sent
anyone to Mars yet but in the future we
could technically send of people there
have a mobile base that basically comes
with them as they travel up the various
cliffs and valleys but for the most part
you'd have to have a really
well-thought-out plan of how you would
actually get to the top but in the
meantime all we can really do are watch
animations like these now this animation
was creating using data from various
NASA missions and if you would like to
watch more the link to it is in the
description down below but this leads me
to the question that I want to lead for
you would you be willing to go on a
voyage that climbs Olympus Mons and if
so how long do you think that voyage
will take a couple months maybe a
Martian year let me know in the comments
below but if you enjoyed this video
please consider leaving a like and
subscribing to this channel if not thank
you for watching and I hope to see you
in the next one
[Music]
