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Mapping Mars: Science, Imagination, and the Birth of a World
How can you make sense of a world where no one has ever lived? Acclaimed science writer Oliver Morton tells the story of the heroic landscapes of Mars, now better mapped in some ways than the Earth itself. Mapping Mars introduces the reader to the nineteenth-century visionaries and spy-satellite pioneers, the petroleum geologists and science-fiction writers, the artists and Arctic explorers who have devoted themselves to the discovery of Mars. In doing so they have given a new world to the human imagination, a setting for our next great adventure.
384 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
January 12, 2023
First of all, if you have the slightest interest in the geology of Mars, or in maps, or in planetary science (and, if not, why are you here?) you *need* to read this book.
"This is a splendid book and a major achievement in the study of Mars.... A number of authors might fairly claim to have written the best Mars novel, but this is the best factual book on Mars that money can buy."
-- New Scientist, 2003
My 2004 rave:
https://www.amazon.com/review/R3FKDCH...
I don't know how the book has held up, or would read almost 20 years later. No doubt it is somewhat out-of-date now.
"This is a splendid book and a major achievement in the study of Mars.... A number of authors might fairly claim to have written the best Mars novel, but this is the best factual book on Mars that money can buy."
-- New Scientist, 2003
My 2004 rave:
https://www.amazon.com/review/R3FKDCH...
I don't know how the book has held up, or would read almost 20 years later. No doubt it is somewhat out-of-date now.
June 29, 2008
Marvelous, from start to finish. About where we've been and where we are going, with the romance and the rigor, the achievement and the dream, and without ever betraying the enormous difficulties involved in the minds of mankind and the machines that we build.
June 12, 2016
All you want to know about Mars, you can find it in this book.
June 12, 2013
Mapping Mars - Science, Imagination, and The Birth of a World by Oliver Morton
In this book the author, Oliver Morton, does not present an inch by inch accounting of the NASA missions to Mars. The foot ruler of progression could have been applied to development, launch, interplanetary journey, orbit, and landing on Mars. Mr. Morton's scale is ultra NASA to include science fiction, art, politics, and the appreciation of human places.
It is the grand age for Earth's robots. One of them, Pathfinder, was the first of humanity's creations to travel on its own across the sands of Mars. This has been the only Mars we have seen, via our robotic envoys. These complex tools make Mars more inspected and accessible, and in some cases, more known than some Earthly areas.
As Mr. Morton tells us, the known Earthly features have been surveyed and touched. Mars is not yet surveyed and hardly touched. In 1969 the control net of mathematics used to represent points of Martian surface science was made up of 115 points. In 1993 the control net was of 36,397 points. Not without failure did this increase in points come about - "Mariner 3 died with its solar panels pinned to its side by the wrapping in which it had been launched in 1964; Mariner 8 fell into the Atlantic in 1971; Mars Observer exploded as it was trying to go into orbit around Mars in 1993; Mars Climate Orbiter burned up in the atmosphere in 1999; Mars Polar Lander made its mistake just forty yards up a few months later." These failures had been sent to clarify the Martian features already seen by Earth-bound telescopic astronomers. The Hourglass Sea had been the first feature of Mars to become a landmark.
The successful flights to Mars were to make known to us the largest volcano by volume in the Solar System - Alba Patera. The Martian skies were a yellow brown as Mr. Morton notes, and not that fake pink shown over the lowest planetary feature, the Hellas Planitia Basin. With poles of carbon dioxide and water, and a climate at the mercy of precession and obliquity, this smallish planet with individual features puts to shame Earthly comparison by means of age and size. A dry, dusty desert in general pervades the specifics of 94 different rock units, and the cratered areas such that with the more craters, the older the terrain.
A third of the surface is lowered like moved by an elevator, writes Mr. Morton. Plains have been found to be remarkably flat, perhaps the flattest surfaces in all of the Solar System. Mars has a big asymmetric mass, the Tharsis bulge, centered on the equator. Layers and layers of surface are seen. These appear to be sedimentary and, thus, like oceans. Oceans of water? Channels as outflow, fretted, and run-off could be sourced by rivers. Of water? Is that water still there, in hidden underground volumes as a planet-wide aquifer? Valley networks are found in only the oldest Martian land.
Mr. Morton reports that episodic oceans with as an episodic a shoreline have been conjectured. Not ocean-like are seeps and gullies that have been found. But this gully water would be too cold. Perhaps water ice could trap carbon dioxide gas molecules to form gas hydrates called clathrates. A large planetary role for carbon dioxide has always been the great challenge to the Martian watery world.
A large consideration must be given the basic Martian geography of a southern hemisphere plastered by very frequent craters in the highlands. In the northern hemisphere are smoother and lower plains. Light and dark areas owe their contrast to dust blown by high velocity winds.
As Mr. Morton puts it, these basics were airbrushed into vision in Arizona where reside the highest per capita proportion of incipient Martians on Earth. By using compressed nitrogen, the airbrush personnel constructed technical documents to better represent the surface at more than motel art standards. The digital data, to which algorithms were applied, received the airbrush after Cronaflex overlaid the photomosiacs that the spacecraft contributed. The results have a presence.
The spacecraft were exemplified by Mariner 9 that was the first American craft to orbit another planet, the first to send back a deluge of data, the first to image more than strips of Mars, and the first to see dramatic weather changes. Later and cheaper spacecraft used aerobraking at a level of a force such as to lift a cheeseburger to finally slowly get into Martian orbit. Extraordinary but confusing surface details were found. Vast tracts of ancient time as surface entities sat on the surface. Details down to boulder size were seen. It was bafflingly different from the same scenes already found from a viewpoint confined by orbital parameters. Radio telescopes based on Earth offered competing scale down to 4 inches. Divergent views came about. More rovers and landers were to come. Already in 2004 there has been success or failure. More attempts are planned for 2007, 2009, and 2011.
Mr. Morton relates that all this effort goes to make of Mars a place. A Mars of places. None of the science can endure unless we have a presence there. This presence could be more than the airbrushed interpretative feature mapping. There are no Martian histories, no Martian legends. Human stuff. Seasons have been imagined because reflective light from Mars was measured in certain ways and put through cognitive filters such that civilizations and science fiction visions became pseudo-real. A point of light was telescopically magnified into a world, like ours, a world of experience, but then largely empty.
We populated it with a space machine and intelligence, the once inaccessible "man from Mars", a perennial favorite, emerged. These Martians make for a world, a place, since it could have minds. A place is gotten to, occupied, known, left - for a purpose. No minds, no life-potential, and then not enough purpose. Otherwise we are in the exhilarating and despondent state of being unique. Only on Earth. Only us.
We categorize Mars. Using spacecraft pictures and not knowing, for a time, at what or where we are looking, because we don't know where, not close enough, the spacecraft might be. The Mariner 9's USGS map combined truth and dense artistry. The Mars Observer Laser Altimeter map was not realistic though impressive. There were copious data in different colors for different terrain using computer filter enhancement and computer shading.
The data provided some of the science fiction authors with source material. Heinlein used Lowell's maps from the heyday of the Martian canal frenzy. Clarke used Antoniadi's maps that preceded or were contemporary with Lowell's. Robinson used the USGS maps. Robinson, as others, found political purpose in Martian independence, where as for many others, star date is always 1776 (as Mr. Morton has it) and terraforming coined as a term in the 1940s, is a usual practice. To sometimes illustrate science fiction about Mars, people were put into the landscape so they denote travel, giving an attempted push to a sense of scale for the huge Martian features. The Martian vastness not always abrupt was being pushed to have change in shape over great distance at nearly imperceptible rates.
The push was to place, from local to Martian universal. Maps as summaries without greater detail and so lacking in coordinates were pushed to extension. One needs a lasting or lengthy experience of rituals and routines for a sense of place. Martian coordinates pushed through cyberspace are the closest we have gotten yet to a Martian familiarity. Our familiar Martian zones are ellipses of uncertainty within which is to be found the lander. Orbital eyes have something always hidden from them. What could be touched by instrumentation, so Mr. Morton writes, is an invisible third of 1% of 1% of 1% of the landing ellipse.
Our familiarity with Mars is increased by representations of it that look like Arizona and thought of as being of the historical American West. It is an American West where one could meet representatives of the politics of the Chinese space program. Perhaps it will be Mars as the new Antarctica. A western theater of Chinese occupied Antarctica could mean less scope for plans about modifications to be applied to Mars - putting an asteroid into the surface, using the terrain's highs and lows to transport material, mirrors in Martian orbit to warm the planet, adding dust to poles to also warm the planet, and nuking the nitrates to get nitrogen and some oxygen too.
Mr. Morton relates well the material and mental mapping of Mars as shown from the above topics he presented. Theories of Mars reflect trends on Earth. So at the end of it all, space travel holds up distant mirrors? Mars now changes as the Earth-bound image modulates. Most want-to-be Martians fervently want Mars to be more than a province of Earth.
In this book the author, Oliver Morton, does not present an inch by inch accounting of the NASA missions to Mars. The foot ruler of progression could have been applied to development, launch, interplanetary journey, orbit, and landing on Mars. Mr. Morton's scale is ultra NASA to include science fiction, art, politics, and the appreciation of human places.
It is the grand age for Earth's robots. One of them, Pathfinder, was the first of humanity's creations to travel on its own across the sands of Mars. This has been the only Mars we have seen, via our robotic envoys. These complex tools make Mars more inspected and accessible, and in some cases, more known than some Earthly areas.
As Mr. Morton tells us, the known Earthly features have been surveyed and touched. Mars is not yet surveyed and hardly touched. In 1969 the control net of mathematics used to represent points of Martian surface science was made up of 115 points. In 1993 the control net was of 36,397 points. Not without failure did this increase in points come about - "Mariner 3 died with its solar panels pinned to its side by the wrapping in which it had been launched in 1964; Mariner 8 fell into the Atlantic in 1971; Mars Observer exploded as it was trying to go into orbit around Mars in 1993; Mars Climate Orbiter burned up in the atmosphere in 1999; Mars Polar Lander made its mistake just forty yards up a few months later." These failures had been sent to clarify the Martian features already seen by Earth-bound telescopic astronomers. The Hourglass Sea had been the first feature of Mars to become a landmark.
The successful flights to Mars were to make known to us the largest volcano by volume in the Solar System - Alba Patera. The Martian skies were a yellow brown as Mr. Morton notes, and not that fake pink shown over the lowest planetary feature, the Hellas Planitia Basin. With poles of carbon dioxide and water, and a climate at the mercy of precession and obliquity, this smallish planet with individual features puts to shame Earthly comparison by means of age and size. A dry, dusty desert in general pervades the specifics of 94 different rock units, and the cratered areas such that with the more craters, the older the terrain.
A third of the surface is lowered like moved by an elevator, writes Mr. Morton. Plains have been found to be remarkably flat, perhaps the flattest surfaces in all of the Solar System. Mars has a big asymmetric mass, the Tharsis bulge, centered on the equator. Layers and layers of surface are seen. These appear to be sedimentary and, thus, like oceans. Oceans of water? Channels as outflow, fretted, and run-off could be sourced by rivers. Of water? Is that water still there, in hidden underground volumes as a planet-wide aquifer? Valley networks are found in only the oldest Martian land.
Mr. Morton reports that episodic oceans with as an episodic a shoreline have been conjectured. Not ocean-like are seeps and gullies that have been found. But this gully water would be too cold. Perhaps water ice could trap carbon dioxide gas molecules to form gas hydrates called clathrates. A large planetary role for carbon dioxide has always been the great challenge to the Martian watery world.
A large consideration must be given the basic Martian geography of a southern hemisphere plastered by very frequent craters in the highlands. In the northern hemisphere are smoother and lower plains. Light and dark areas owe their contrast to dust blown by high velocity winds.
As Mr. Morton puts it, these basics were airbrushed into vision in Arizona where reside the highest per capita proportion of incipient Martians on Earth. By using compressed nitrogen, the airbrush personnel constructed technical documents to better represent the surface at more than motel art standards. The digital data, to which algorithms were applied, received the airbrush after Cronaflex overlaid the photomosiacs that the spacecraft contributed. The results have a presence.
The spacecraft were exemplified by Mariner 9 that was the first American craft to orbit another planet, the first to send back a deluge of data, the first to image more than strips of Mars, and the first to see dramatic weather changes. Later and cheaper spacecraft used aerobraking at a level of a force such as to lift a cheeseburger to finally slowly get into Martian orbit. Extraordinary but confusing surface details were found. Vast tracts of ancient time as surface entities sat on the surface. Details down to boulder size were seen. It was bafflingly different from the same scenes already found from a viewpoint confined by orbital parameters. Radio telescopes based on Earth offered competing scale down to 4 inches. Divergent views came about. More rovers and landers were to come. Already in 2004 there has been success or failure. More attempts are planned for 2007, 2009, and 2011.
Mr. Morton relates that all this effort goes to make of Mars a place. A Mars of places. None of the science can endure unless we have a presence there. This presence could be more than the airbrushed interpretative feature mapping. There are no Martian histories, no Martian legends. Human stuff. Seasons have been imagined because reflective light from Mars was measured in certain ways and put through cognitive filters such that civilizations and science fiction visions became pseudo-real. A point of light was telescopically magnified into a world, like ours, a world of experience, but then largely empty.
We populated it with a space machine and intelligence, the once inaccessible "man from Mars", a perennial favorite, emerged. These Martians make for a world, a place, since it could have minds. A place is gotten to, occupied, known, left - for a purpose. No minds, no life-potential, and then not enough purpose. Otherwise we are in the exhilarating and despondent state of being unique. Only on Earth. Only us.
We categorize Mars. Using spacecraft pictures and not knowing, for a time, at what or where we are looking, because we don't know where, not close enough, the spacecraft might be. The Mariner 9's USGS map combined truth and dense artistry. The Mars Observer Laser Altimeter map was not realistic though impressive. There were copious data in different colors for different terrain using computer filter enhancement and computer shading.
The data provided some of the science fiction authors with source material. Heinlein used Lowell's maps from the heyday of the Martian canal frenzy. Clarke used Antoniadi's maps that preceded or were contemporary with Lowell's. Robinson used the USGS maps. Robinson, as others, found political purpose in Martian independence, where as for many others, star date is always 1776 (as Mr. Morton has it) and terraforming coined as a term in the 1940s, is a usual practice. To sometimes illustrate science fiction about Mars, people were put into the landscape so they denote travel, giving an attempted push to a sense of scale for the huge Martian features. The Martian vastness not always abrupt was being pushed to have change in shape over great distance at nearly imperceptible rates.
The push was to place, from local to Martian universal. Maps as summaries without greater detail and so lacking in coordinates were pushed to extension. One needs a lasting or lengthy experience of rituals and routines for a sense of place. Martian coordinates pushed through cyberspace are the closest we have gotten yet to a Martian familiarity. Our familiar Martian zones are ellipses of uncertainty within which is to be found the lander. Orbital eyes have something always hidden from them. What could be touched by instrumentation, so Mr. Morton writes, is an invisible third of 1% of 1% of 1% of the landing ellipse.
Our familiarity with Mars is increased by representations of it that look like Arizona and thought of as being of the historical American West. It is an American West where one could meet representatives of the politics of the Chinese space program. Perhaps it will be Mars as the new Antarctica. A western theater of Chinese occupied Antarctica could mean less scope for plans about modifications to be applied to Mars - putting an asteroid into the surface, using the terrain's highs and lows to transport material, mirrors in Martian orbit to warm the planet, adding dust to poles to also warm the planet, and nuking the nitrates to get nitrogen and some oxygen too.
Mr. Morton relates well the material and mental mapping of Mars as shown from the above topics he presented. Theories of Mars reflect trends on Earth. So at the end of it all, space travel holds up distant mirrors? Mars now changes as the Earth-bound image modulates. Most want-to-be Martians fervently want Mars to be more than a province of Earth.
June 9, 2018
I picked up this book because I thought it would be interesting to learn how humans mapped a planet they could only see through telescopes/satellites/rovers.
The first chapters do cover that topic, but then the book pivots to Martian geology (areology?). I’m no scientist, and the book covers Martian geology in considerable depth, but it never went over my head. The author is good at breaking down science topics for the layperson.
Ultimately, anybody who wants to write science fiction set on Mars should start here. This book has a history of our understanding of Mars (including notable mistakes), mentions a bunch of the leading scientists and organizations in the field in you want to study further, and provides an excellent foundation for understanding where the water is/was on Mars and the most likely environments for carbon-based life forms, if there are any.
The first chapters do cover that topic, but then the book pivots to Martian geology (areology?). I’m no scientist, and the book covers Martian geology in considerable depth, but it never went over my head. The author is good at breaking down science topics for the layperson.
Ultimately, anybody who wants to write science fiction set on Mars should start here. This book has a history of our understanding of Mars (including notable mistakes), mentions a bunch of the leading scientists and organizations in the field in you want to study further, and provides an excellent foundation for understanding where the water is/was on Mars and the most likely environments for carbon-based life forms, if there are any.
February 28, 2021
This book is an in-depth history of the observation of Mars. Morton leads the reader on a journey from the elder days when Mars was but a ruddy wandering star, to the near-future in which Mars is a real place we can really visit. Anyone who's ever tried to research a place on Earth only by staring at GoogleMaps will appreciate much of the book's content. The author's conversational style makes all the hard science accessible to those of us lacking a strong science background. Mars aficionados will be gratified to see many of the most prominent figures associated with the study of the Red Planet brought up time and again, people like Lowell, Zubrin, and Robinson, and the background behind GoogleMars. With the recent landings of Pathfinder and now Perseverance, it's fascinating to read the history of all that's led up to this.
February 9, 2021
I highly recommend reading this in tandem with Kim Stanley Robinson's fictional "Mars Trilogy" because it will help you understand the scientific journey behind our knowledge of Mars that helped Robinson create such an engaging human landscape of a currently-fictional world (I don't mean that Mars is fictional of course, but that Mars _as a human-settled world_ is).
March 29, 2020
A bit dated by now with all the new stuff we know about Mars since this was written all those years ago. However, Morton’s take on Mars is very philosophical and poetic; and real poetry is timeless.
May 8, 2018
It was not compelling enough for me to read through the end. Some facts about Mars are very interesting, and I got to know more about the people working behind grand projects. But the background proved to be too much for me and I skipped most of the book. It might be good if you are passionate about Mars in detail (like, very, very detailed)
July 31, 2023
Great read - highly recommend. Great insights into the people and their challenges in mapping Mars and the mechanisms of how NASA and academia work together (or not) to explore space.
September 26, 2025
Excellent essays on the various aspects and elements of Mars. Hugely informative and thought provoking.
Read primarily as research for my novels Second Chances and Lazarus 3.
Read primarily as research for my novels Second Chances and Lazarus 3.
August 10, 2011
This book is just fun as hell. Especially when you pair it up with the glorious NASA Atlas of the Solar System, which I just happen to have a copy of. I now crave the MOLA (Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter) globe of the red planet. This book refers often to old NASA maps that I used to see when Dad was working at TRW during the old Viking projects, and also to the Kim Stanley Robinson "Mars" cycle, which I understand will be a SciFi Channel miniseries next year. As I finished this book, two or three new Mars probes lifted off from Earth, a fitting coda to a fascinating story of cartography and geography.
May 23, 2013
If you have the slightest interest in the exploration of the planet Mars, you'll find this book a fascinating read.
June 7, 2011
Please don't waste your time with this insufferable bore. Not even academically interesting
December 20, 2012
Good, but the author jumps around a lot. And it's really not primarily concerned with mapping.
January 12, 2015
A truelly enjoyable read on the history of man's attempts to map Mars.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews