Olympus Mons topography

Olympus Mons colour-coded according to height from white (highest) to blue (lowest), based on images captured by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express. The new data find that Olympus Mons is built on a rigid lithosphere whereas the nearby Tharsis Montes partially sank into a less rigid lithosphere, suggesting that there were large spatial variations in the heat flux from the mantle at the time of their formation.