Behold Colorful Geologic Maps of Mars Released by The United States Geological Survey

The USGS Astro­ge­ol­o­gy Sci­ence Cen­ter has recent­ly released a series of col­or­ful and intri­cate­ly-detailed maps of Mars. These col­or­ful maps, notes USGS, “pro­vide high­ly detailed views of the [plantet’s] sur­face and allow sci­en­tists to inves­ti­gate com­plex geo­log­ic rela­tion­ships both on and beneath the sur­face. These types of maps are use­ful for both plan­ning for and then con­duct­ing land­ed mis­sions.”

The map above lets you see Olym­pus Mons, the tallest vol­cano in the solar sys­tem, which stands more than twice the height of Mount Ever­est. The USGS goes on to add: “Map read­ers can visu­al­ize the caldera com­plex more eas­i­ly due to the detail that is avail­able at the 1:200,000 scale and the addi­tion of con­tour lines to the map. The map cov­ers a region that is rough­ly the size of the Dal­las-Ft. Worth met­ro­pol­i­tan area and is a detailed look at the volcano’s sum­mit that we have not seen before. This new view of the Olym­pus Mons caldera com­plex allows sci­en­tists to more eas­i­ly com­pare it to sim­i­lar fea­tures on Earth (known as ter­res­tri­al analogs) such as Hawaii’s Mau­na Loa.”

You can find more Mar­t­ian maps here.

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via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Sur­face of Mars Shown in Stun­ning 4K Res­o­lu­tion

View and Down­load Near­ly 60,000 Maps from the U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey (USGS)

Vin­tage Geo­log­i­cal Maps Get Turned Into 3D Topo­graph­i­cal Won­ders