[Rockhounds] Giant volcano discovered on Mars

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

In a groundbreaking announcement at the 55th Lunar and Planetary Science
Conference held in The Woodlands, Texas, scientists revealed the discovery
of a giant volcano and possible sheet of buried glacier ice in the eastern
part of Mars' Tharsis volcanic province near the planet's equator.

Imaged repeatedly by orbiting spacecraft around Mars since Mariner 9 in
1971—but deeply eroded beyond easy recognition, the giant volcano had been
hiding in plain sight for decades in one of Mars' most iconic regions, at
the boundary between the heavily fractured maze-like Noctis Labyrinthus
(Labyrinth of the Night) and the monumental canyons of Valles Marineris
(Valleys of Mariner).

Provisionally designated "Noctis volcano" pending an official name, the
structure is centered at 7° 35' S, 93° 55' W. It reaches +9022 meters
(29,600 feet) in elevation and spans 450 kilometers (280 miles) in width.
The volcano's gigantic size and complex modification history indicate that
it has been active for a very long time. In its southeastern part lies a
thin, recent volcanic deposit beneath which glacier ice
<https://phys.org/tags/glacier+ice/> is likely still present.

This combined giant volcano and possible glacier ice discovery is
significant, as it points to an exciting new location to study Mars'
geologic evolution through time, search for life, and explore with robots
and humans in the future.

"We were examining the geology of an area where we had found the remains of
a glacier last year when we realized we were inside a huge and deeply
eroded volcano," said Dr. Pascal Lee, planetary scientist with the SETI
Institute and the Mars Institute based at NASA Ames Research Center, and
the lead author of the study.
https://phys.org/news/2024-03-giant-volcano-mars.html