A frozen ocean of overlapping lava flows spilling from a giant volcano.
Daedalia Planum is a broad lava plain southwest of the Tharsis bulge, built almost entirely from long, overlapping flows erupted by Arsia Mons. Its surface is one of the clearest records of large-volume basaltic volcanism on Mars.
Claim your plot here →Daedalia Planum is what happens when a shield volcano keeps erupting for hundreds of millions of years. Flow after flow of fluid basalt poured southwest off Arsia Mons, the southernmost of the three great Tharsis volcanoes, stacking into a smooth apron hundreds of kilometres wide. Crater counts show flows of many different ages layered on top of one another.
Because the surface is relatively young and well preserved, Daedalia is a favourite for studying how Martian lava travels and cools. Orbiters have mapped individual flow lobes, channels and levees frozen in place. It is a plain written entirely in the language of fire, with almost no water-carved features to complicate the story.