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What Planet Has Olympus Mons, the Largest Mountain in the Solar System?

Olympus Mons is the largest known mountain in the solar system, being orders of magnitude larger than Mount Everest, the highest mountain on earth. It is so large that if you were to stand at the bottom of it, you wouldn't be able to see the top -- it covers so much space that it would resemble a sheer rock wall with no discernible ending. It is one of the more impressive objects in the solar system.

Size
- Olympus Mons, located on Mars, is 16 miles high and has a base the size of Arizona. This gives it enough volume that it could hold every Hawaiian island.
Volcanic Activity
- Olympus Mons is a dormant -- not extinct - volcano. This means that it has erupted in the last 2 million years, and it could easily erupt again. Astronomers would consider an eruption to be an extremely momentous occasion. Olympus Mons is a volcano of the shield type, the same type of volcano that makes up the Hawaiian islands. Over time, lava flowing out of fissures on the planet's surface builds up to form the shield volcano.
Living Feasibility
- Olympus Mons makes Mars more habitable for the same reason that parts of Wyoming are habitable. Yellowstone Park, essentially an enormous volcano, heats underground pools, which in turn heat the water in Wyoming. The same goes for Mars, so some scientists suggest that Olympus Mons would be a good landing zone in order to take advantage of the natural heat.
Reason for Size
- Tectonic plates on Earth move around, which means that volcanoes can't stick around for particularly long -- at least in the millions-of-years periods that pass for short in geological terms. On Mars, however, tectonic plates don't move as frequently or as quickly, which means that lava flows cool down and pile up. Without a plate moving underneath it, the lava flow on Mars was able to form into Olympus Mons.

Astronomy