Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

A giant volcano hiding in plain sight in one of Mars’ most iconic regions.
Image credit: Background image: NASA/USGS Mars globe. Geologic interpretation and annotations by Pascal Lee and Sourabh Shubham (2024)

The Red Planet continues to surprise us. New research has unveiled a giant volcano and possible sheet of buried glacier ice.

Viewed as a groundbreaking announcement, the site on Mars for this new big reveal is in the eastern part of Mars’ Tharsis volcanic province, near the planet’s equator.

Due to its eroded, tough-to-spot nature, the feature has been missed since Mariner 9 imagery in 1971.

The finding has been reported during the 55th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference now under way in The Woodlands, Texas.

This just-reported study was conducted using data from NASA’s Mariner 9, Viking Orbiter 1 and 2, Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey, and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter missions, as well as the European Space Agency’s Mars Express mission.

Newly discovered giant volcano is located in the “middle of the action” on Mars.
Image credit: Background image: NASA Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) digital elevation model.
Geologic interpretation & annotations by Pascal Lee and Sourabh Shubham (2024)

Potential destination?

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 vast canyon system of Valles Marineris (Valleys of Mariner).

The area in which the newly documented volcano sits is home to three other well known giant volcanoes: Ascraeus Mons, Pavonis Mons, and Arsia Mons.

Although more eroded and less high than these other volcanic counterparts, the newly discovered volcano rivals the others in diameter: about 280 miles (450 kilometers and measures roughly 29,600 feet in elevation.

“Its discovery points to an exciting new place to search for life, and a potential destination for future robotic and human exploration,” notes a statement from the SETI Institute.

Mars beckons. Human explorers can maximize the science output for unraveling the complex nature of the Red Planet.
Image credit: NASA/Pat Rawlings

Long-sought “smoking gun”

Lead author of the study is Pascal Lee, a planetary scientist with the SETI Institute and the Mars Institute based at NASA Ames Research Center.

“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,” Lee explains.

The volcano’s enormous size and complex modification history indicate that it has been active for a very long time. Furthermore, in its southeastern part lies a thin, recent volcanic deposit beneath which glacier ice is likely still present.

“This area of Mars is known to have a wide variety of hydrated minerals spanning a long stretch of Martian history,” explains Sourabh Shubham, a graduate student at the University of Maryland’s Department of Geology and the study’s co-author.

“A volcanic setting for these minerals had long been suspected. So, it may not be too surprising to find a volcano here,” Shubham added. “In some sense, this large volcano is a long-sought ‘smoking gun.’”

Human explorers on Mars will enlist a variety of tools to reveal the secrets of the Red Planet.
Image credit: NASA

Unknowns and mysteries

This new discovery, however, also underscores several mysteries.

For one, while it is clear that it has been active for a long time and began to build up early in Mars’ history, what is unknown is exactly how early. Likewise, although it has experienced eruptions even in geologically speaking “modern times,” it is not known if the feature is still volcanically active and might erupt again.

Mix in yet another unknown. If it has been active for a long time, could the combination of sustained warmth and water from ice have allowed the site to harbor life?

“It’s really a combination of things that makes the Noctis volcano site exceptionally exciting,” Lee senses. “It’s an ancient and long-lived volcano so deeply eroded that you could hike, drive, or fly through it to examine, sample, and date different parts of its interior to study Mars’ evolution through time.”

The huge canyon system of Valles Marineris is arguably Mars’ most dramatic landscape and offers a scientific bonanza for future expeditionary crews.
Image credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum), CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Prime location

Lee concludes that its long history of heat interacting with water and ice “makes it a prime location for astrobiology and our search for signs of life.”

Finally, with glacier ice likely still preserved near the surface in a relatively warm equatorial region on Mars, “the place is looking very attractive for robotic and human exploration,” Lee said in the SETI statement.

The possible presence of glacier ice at shallow depths near the equator means that humans could potentially explore a less frigid part of the planet while still being able to extract water for hydration and manufacturing rocket fuel.

That made-on-Mars propellant is feasible by breaking down the water into hydrogen and oxygen.

For more details, go to “Giant Volcano Discovered on Mars” at:

https://www.seti.org/press-release/giant-volcano-discovered-mars

Also, go to the LPSC-presented paper detailing the new finding at:

https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2024/pdf/2745.pdf