The young, glass-smooth plain scientists eye for the first colonies.
Amazonis Planitia is a strikingly smooth plain west of the Tharsis volcanoes, resurfaced by some of the youngest lava flows on Mars. Its flat, low, radar-quiet terrain makes it a repeatedly cited candidate for future landing and colony sites.
Claim your plot here →Amazonis Planitia is so geologically young and lightly cratered that its name defines the Amazonian period, the most recent chapter of Martian history. It was flooded by fluid lava flows that left a remarkably level surface, and its low elevation and smoothness make it one of the safest imagined places to set down a spacecraft.
That same flatness, plus suspected shallow ground ice at these mid-northern latitudes, is why mission planners keep returning to Amazonis in colony-site discussions. A stable, obstacle-free plain with accessible water would give an early settlement both a landing zone and a resource base.