Ordnance Survey unfolds handy Mars map Those of you planning a hiking holiday on Mars will be pleased to learn that Ordnance Survey has produced a handy map of the Red Planet, or at least a 3,672 by 2,721km chunk of it. OS used elevation data from the Mars Global Surveyor's Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) and official International Astronomical Union and U.S. …
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The Ordnance survey is famously "the survey by the Board of Ordnance" so we know where to site artillery in case of invasion. Which is why the Ordnance survey still proudly and prominately shows the War Department logo (the famous English broadhead arrow) in the Ordnance survey logo which is displayed on the front of every map they print.
Having invaded virtually every country on earth at some point new frontiers obviously await her Majesties armed forces!
Ok, more seriously this is good practice for the map makers, though it's probably going to be some time before they can check the measurements with a theodolite to make sure the map is passably accurate. It's quite amusing to reflect that it's likely that mission planners may well end up using these maps of Mars in mission planning in the future because they are going to be readily available and easily comprehensible!
I aint gettin' on the b ark until they puts some BEEF on the A ark!
And lamb and porkers.
After no manned mission would be possible without BACON, right?
That map is seriously deficient. So sign of where the salt mines or oak forests are yet. How do they expect us to smoke the porkers???
And no sign of a PH, a PC or T anywhere?? Where's a man gonna go?
"When are google going to do a streetmap?"
Years ago...
I've no idea why OS have bothered unless they thought astronauts might need a horrible projection/datum in space as well as at home. At least on Mars there isn't any GPS yet so they won't look quite as outdated...
I've no idea why OS have bothered
How about because they were asked? And also because they know a lot about maps.
Just compared the image with Google Mars and the OS winds hands down on legibility and orientation and that's because they've taken the trouble of not making something for computers that people may or may not be able to use.
There's a lot to admire in Google's mapping stuff but they're not designed for serious navigation.
No I know it's not remotely a sphere, that's what wgs84 is for which allows maps to use a standard reference system which all the gadgets output. Perhaps I should have been clearer that my only real gripe with OS is that they refuse to add gps compatible coordinates in the face of overwhelming evidence that that's now how people navigate. The maps, I agree, are otherwise lovely.
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I'm sure it's no coincidence that they chose to map the exact area depicted in Andy Weir's book The Martian, recently filmed with Matt Damon starring.
The Ares 3 base is located in Acidalia Planitia, and he has to journey to the Ares 4 MAV in Schiaparelli Crater. He also goes and scavenges Pathfinder (marked) for it's comms array.
Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here? asked Alice. That depends a good deal on where you want to get to. said the Cheshire cat. I don't much care where -- said Alice. Then it doesn't matter which way you go. said the Cat. -- so long I get somewhere, Alice added as an explanation. Oh you're sure to do that, said the Cat, if you only walk long enough.
Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
I'm pretty sure the OS already released maps of both Mars and The Moon, back in the late 70s/early 80s, because I have a copy of each somewhere in my basement of crap. I may be confusing them with McNally products; I haven't actually had mine in my hands for over three decades.
I love OS maps. I used to grab a 1:50 000 map of anywhere I worked or holidayed during my UK consulting career, just because. I used the older 1 inch to 1 mile ones too. They taught us how to read them in Geography class, and I used them in my outward bound stuff as a young teenager. For a while you could get both because there was a commitment to mapping the entire British Isles at 1 inch to 1 mile and they weren't done when the move to metric began.
I miss them. They don't have such things in the US. The nearest you can get for the detail as far as I know are military maps or forestry maps. I seriously doubt that anyone under the age of fifty could read one absent military training anyway.
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