What can one expect to find out on the dusty plains of Mars? This new map shows you through the eyes of a medieval cartographer.
The map is the work of Eleanor Lutz of Tabletop Whale, who used NASA data to complete the full map. “I picked the style because I thought the project had a similar perspective as cartographers in the old days. We were both trying to draw new worlds that hadn’t been fully explored, with missing data and expeditions constantly bringing back new information,” Lutz told Gizmodo.
There’s been a series of newly-styled Mars maps lately—in addition to this one from Lutz, a recent ESA map showed Mars in a modern roadmap style. It’s not just a coincidence that Mars is suddenly the hot spot to map. It says something about the change in what Mars means to us.
Mars is no longer a distant, dusty planet on which we’re unlikely to ever step foot. Instead, it’s our close neighbor, and we’re beginning to imagine getting much, much closer to it—possibly even living on it. As that future and that possible Martian life inches nearer, we also begin to imagine what it would be like to really roam around and get familiar with the surface of the red planet. Naturally, maps come to mind.
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