Tharsis Tholus: Mars' Colored Volcano

The latest image taken by HRSC (high-resolution stereo camera) on ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft is not again an active glacier, but a colored volcano dubbed as ‘Tharsis Tholus.’ This large and extinct volcano is actually towering 8km above its surrounding terrain and in fact almost match the tallest peak of Earth’s Mt. Everest.

Because of ages, Tharsis Tholus seems to be deformed and battered, makes it more special in its bizarre conditin and color-coded topographical label.

According to ESA news, the volcano emptied its magma chamber during eruptions and as the lava ran out to the surface, the chamber roof was no longer able to support its own weight, so the volcano collapsed forming the large caldera at the center.

This caldera, as what European Space Agency said, has an almost circular outline of about 32×34 km, an dis ringed by faults that have allowed caldera floor to subside by as much 2.7 km.

Russia and NASA’s mission to discover what lies beyond the Red Planet is relentless as we can ever imagine, and this month of November will be the busiest for them. Russia is planning to launch the Phobos-Soil, which is formerly known as Phobos-Grunt to land on the Mars’ larger moon to collect samples and will return to Earth by the year 2014. This Phobos-Soil will also carry the Yinghuo-1, the first Chinese spacecraft to land on Mars.

While NASA will launch its large rover known as ‘Curiosity’ in order to detect past or present organic molecules on Mars.