A first of its kind project of the ones involved, Ordnance Survey completed a digital map of Mars. Ordnance Survey is an organization actually in charge of mapping Britain’s ways that took the chance of doing something that had not been done before – at least not at this scale.

But the project was not without a grand purpose in mind: it was done for the scientist currently planning the landings of the ExoMars rover, planned for 2018 by the European Space Agency. While it is only the first of many, this mapping of the Red Planet will surely guide and assist the planned human navigation of the planet whenever that occurs, in the next few decades.

The map was rendered with the help of pictures taken by NASA along the last few years and made available to the public, but it is far from complete. While Mars is only about half of planet Earth in diameter, the map that was made by the Ordnance Survey only covers a surface roughly the size of the United States, which makes up about 7 percent of the total surface of planet Mars and translates into 3.7 million square miles.

The map, as it was rendered by the cartographers on the project, is highly detailed in geographic contours, displaying a very accurate representation of all the landmarks present on the surface of Mars. You can spot impact craters, landing sites and the different terrain characteristics that make up the surface of the red planet.

The cartographers that have been working on the map of Mars commented on what it was like to create the representation of a planet so different than our own. Chris Wesson discussed how even though the principles behind creating both are pretty much the same, the aesthetics and the process of it all are very different. It took a large amount of effort to map the US-sized representation of Mars’ surface as the terrain is particularly uneven and the cartographers needed multiple ‘shots’ of the same locations in order to reveal an accurate representation of Mars’ landscapes.

The map is hoped to be suitable enough in order to be used for the future Mars missions that space agencies hope to achieve by the year 2030, the next greatest step humans will take in our solar system.

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