I am curious as to what does the crater of Olympus Mons contain? Does NASA have any mission to send a space probe to land on it? If not, what about other parts in Olympus Mons?
-
2$\begingroup$ Probably a Caldera & little chance of anything else (interesting). It would be one of the last places they check for life, given they look mostly for (signs of previous) life in rock that is very old and shows signs of being associated with water in its 'youth' when Mars was young. $\endgroup$– Andrew ThompsonAug 27, 2015 at 9:36
1 Answer
No, landing on any of the really high points on Mars is generally considered less interesting, and it's much more difficult to do, than any of the rest of Mars. Here's a few reasons why:
- Landing that high up, you can't really use parachutes. It's pretty common for missions to go to the lowest points on Mars (See map below, blue represents lower areas on Mars)
- The 4 calderas have relatively little interesting about them. For the most part, they appear very featureless (See photo from HiRISE of Olympus Mons)
- There are other areas of Mars that show more interesting chemical compounds, etc, that just don't show up on the mountain. Thus, they are higher priority.
I suggest if you are curious then look up HiRISE images from Olympus Mons. There are quite a few of them, and they give a pretty good indicator as to what it's like.