A new image from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, currently orbiting Mars, shows a close-up view across the summit of Olympus Mons, the largest volcano known in our solar system.

Tiny section of Mars Global Surveyor image. See full length picture. Photo: NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems

Olympus Mons is one of the largest volcanoes known. It is roughly the height of 3 Mount Everests and is nearly 550 km (340 miles) across. Despite its great height, the slopes of this volcano are only a few degrees -- a person would not really climb Olympus Mons, but simply walk uphill toward its summit. Once reaching the summit, however, one would peer across and down into the large complex of nested craters -- or calderae -- formed by collapse after eruptions ceased and magma withdrew deep beneath the volcano. Similar sights -- though smaller -- can be seen by visiting the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park on the Island of Hawaii. Olympus Mons is not an active volcano. The Mars Global Surveyor Mars Orbiter Camera image shows that the summit region includes surfaces mantled by fine dust and pocked by small impact craters, and no surfaces exhibit fresh, dark lava flows like those seen near active volcanoes such as those in Hawaii.

The MOC high resolution image covers a strip across the summit region that is 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) wide by 91 kilometers (57 miles) long. Sunlight illuminates the MOC image from the lower left. Boulders can be seen in some of the troughs cut into the floor of the summit calderae in the 8 meter and 6 meter per pixel views; lava flows are visible in the northern portion of the image.

Malin Space Science Systems and the California Institute of Technology built the MOC using spare hardware from the Mars Observer mission. MSSS operates the camera from its facilities in San Diego, CA. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Mars Surveyor Operations Project operates the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft with its industrial partner, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, from facilities in Pasadena, CA and Denver, CO.