Mapping Mars2002
science, imagination and the birth of a world
by Oliver Morton
"Mapping Mars is both a chronicle of the technology that has taken us to the threshold of another planet and a history of the growth of human understanding. It introduces the small band of scientists who are trying to understand the forces that have shaped the face of Mars, to tease apart the earthlike from the alien in these familiar yet distorted landscapes.
They are driven both by scientific curiosity and by a more primitive desire to discover what this distant place is really like; of what it would be like to stand under its dusty skies and know it for what it is. They are opening up a new world to the imagination.".
"Their world is a dramatic one. On Mars the volcano Ascraeus Mons climbs to more than twice the height of Everest; the impact basin Hellas, as wide as Western Europe,...