« can advertising liberate textbooks? | Main | shifting forms of graffiti »
google on mars 
08.17.2006, 1:43 AM
posted by ben vershbow
Apparently, this came out in March, but I 've only just stumbled on it now. Google has a version of its maps program for the planet Mars, or at least the part of if explored and documented by the 2001 NASA Mars Odyssey mission. It's quite spectacular, especially the psychedelic elevation view:
There's also various info tied to specific coordinates on the map: location of dunes, craters, planes etc., as well as stories from the Odyssey mission, mostly descriptions of the Martian landscape. It would be fun to do an anthology of Mars-located science fiction with the table of contents mapped, or an edition of Bradbury's Martian Chronicles. Though I suppose there'd a fair bit of retrofitting of the atlas to tales written out of pure fancy and not much knowledge of Martian geography (Marsography?). If nothing else, there's the seeds of a great textbook here. Does the Google Maps API extend to Mars, or is it just an earth thing?
Posted by ben vershbow on August 17, 2006 01:43 AM
tags: bradbury, google, maps, mars, science_fiction, search, textbooks
