AST115H: Surface of Mars Lab

Abstract:
The surface of Mars was studied and

Introduction:

Mars is a our celestial neighbor, so it is important to study mars in order to get a better understanding of our universe as a whole.

Procedure:

A)

Pervical Lowell’s recorded drawings that depicted the surface of Mars were studied, and compared with pictures of the surface of Mars from the Hubble space telescope.

B)

Images comparable to what is typically found with the use of ground telescopes were studied.

C)

Images of the surface of mars taken at different times of the year with the hubble space telescope were compared.

D)

The surface of mars was further studied by use of elevation maps and other topographical features, along with the landing sites of the various Mars rover missions.

E)

Google Maps Mars © was used to get a further understanding of the surface of Mars.

F)

Future possible missions to Mars were planned.

Results:

A)

In percival’s drawings, i’ve concluded that they hold the appearance of a passage way. They are similar to highways in the sense that they are all connected, and look to be heading to a centralized point. It does appear to be like a man made system of travel.

It’s hard to say exactly what he could have been seeing but it looks like the highlands and mountain ridges, etc.

B)

You can identify the lowlands and highlands of very easily. The different levels of contrast in the height variations on the surface. You can see the north and south poles which show the tilt of the planet.

The lowlands resemble what could have been seas.

The ground based images are similar in the sense that they show the vague planetary surface details, but other than that there isn’t many similarities. Right off the bat, you see the difference in color, but that’s not really worth mentioning as it could be due to various third party factors.

Mars has a lot of visible craters, but not nearly as many as the moon. Which means the surface of Mars is younger than the surface of the Moon.

The S Shape you get when tracking the position of mars across several night skies, is evidence of the planet getting closer than/far away to earth giving the appearance that it moves backwards. Retrograde motion is what was used in ancient times to set apart the differences between planets and stars at the time.

C)

You can see the poles clearly, evident by the ice, along with that, in the second image you can see evidence of one of the planetary dust storms

D)

The four highest points on Mars appear to be either volcanoes or mountains.

The southern hemisphere is higher. Maybe at one point in time, the northern half was filled with more lava, maybe even water. But if it were lava that all eventually dried up, this would give a better reason to as why the surface of the northern hemisphere appears younger due to lack of cratering. They were all filled with lava and then the lava hardened creating a smooth surface.

The biggest crater appears to be the Hellas Planitia area.

It looks like the viking lander landed in  relatively smooth terrain. Maybe they were trying to get a better understanding of the makeup of the lowlands.

Spirit/Pathfinder/ and opportunity seemed to have landings in various areas each different, but looking like they are trying to get a better understanding of the craters.

The soviet craft looked like it was on the edge of a crater. So it may have tipped over and fallen into one hurting itself. Or you know, the aliens pushed it over. Who knows

E)

Spirit landed a in a little spot that sort of resembles a river bed. Opportunity looks like a similar situation. Perhaps they were looking for water or evidence of water there previously.

With the infrared map you can see a large amount of craters. I didn’t see much of a physical difference between the two other than that and a greater amount of contrast in the shades.

It resembles something travelling from the valles to what could have been a large body of water.

F)

In my mission to mars, I would be looking to colonize it. Obviously, i’d have to invent sufficient space travel that would make the trips fast. But i’d see what kind of resources were available, and what sort of things would benefit life. I would then proceed to exploit it. The goals would be to find out if colonization is a possibility, and if not, what could be done to artificially create an atmosphere that could efficiently sustain life. I would then put the plan into action. No one currently has dibs on Mars, so I officially call dibs.