Sky Gazing on Mars - Nautilus

C lose your eyes and imagine that you are walking along a flat, dusty plain. All is silent in this place except for the crunching beneath your feet with each step. As you proceed, you sink in a little, breaking through a white crust just below the surface. Purely by accident, you strike a small rock, left undisturbed for eons.

Startled at disturbing the quiet, you open your eyes to see the rock flying away, traveling farther, and hanging in the air longer than your earthly senses tell you is reasonable. Then you recall that only a third of Earth’s gravity exists in this place. So, you resume walking, continuing onward, looking for that perfect spot. Somewhere you can lie back and just stare up at the sky for a few minutes. Somewhere you can contemplate this otherworldly setting and the clouds scudding along overhead.

Though it might not seem like it at first, Mars has the most similar surface environment to that of the Earth of nearly any place in our solar system. An exceptionally dry, exceptionally cold environment, to be sure, but something we might recognize in human terms, even if it isn’t a place where we could survive without the protection of a space suit.

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