When seen from space, this planet can be easily identified by a massive crater formation in the northern hemisphere. This was created several thousand years earlier by a collision with an asteroid. Tonder has an orbit that crosses an area of the system littered with such uncharted objects and it is highly probable that another strike of this kind may happen at any time.

Tonder does have one other claim to fame apart from this feature - it was the battleground for the short-lived Algarian civil war. The Algarians were a race whose original homeworld was unknown, but who decided to colonize the Algara system several hundred years ago. At first, there was no problem but a splinter group of Algarians tried to organize a ruthless military coup by assembling a huge pulse cannon on Tonder.

The plan was to force the leaders on the main Algarian colony to resign, and if they did not, to blow them to atoms with the pulse cannon. An army was sent to Tonder to crush this rebellious faction and destroy the weapon aimed at the main colony. After much bloodshed, the result was a stalemate, resulting in the few remaining members of the Algarian splinter group on Tonder firing the pulse cannon and killing most of the Algarians located in their main colony and devastating the planet it was located on. They then found that they had no way of getting any food or other supplies to the lifeless world they were on and died of starvation. After this, the Algarians and their pulse cannon disappeared from history.