Google Earth View of Mark Watney's Travels on Mars as Seen in The Martian
Click on Mars at the bottom of the page to go right to my Google Earth file of Watney's path on Mars.
Watney's travels shown on colorized map of Mars from Google Earth. Colors relate to elevation.
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Schiaparelli Crater - Watney's final destination - as seen on Google Earth.
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The Martian was not filmed on Mars, of course, but the locations of Ares 3 and 4 on Mars and the paths Mark Watney took on a rover are real. Thanks to NASA’s many spacecraft orbiting Mars, a complete image mosiac of the Martian surface is available in high resolution. And thanks to Google Earth, you can access this mosaic and follow Watney’s journeys down valleys and around craters, although you will not find the tracks of his rover or his footprints.
This article is a lot more fun if you have Google Earth open on your computer so you can see the sites and paths in The Martian. Your first option is to look at a path that someone else made - me. Click on the Mars planet at the bottom of this webpage. If you have Google Earth on your computer, it will automatically open up and show you Mark’s path - on Earth. Look at the toolbar above the image viewer and click on the little planet. Choose Mars from the drop-down menu and you will be redirected to Mars. The complete path should now show up on Mars.
Or - if you already know how to use Google Earth - you can placemark each location yourself and draw your own path around craters and other obstacles Watney encountered:
31.2°N 28.5°W (Ares 3)
Pathfinder
Rutherford Crater
Trouvelot Crater (corner of Watney’s Triangle)
Becquerel Crater (corner of Watney’s Triangle)
Marth Crater (corner of Watney’s Triangle)
2°18’45”S 5°20’49”W (Opportunity’s current location peeking over the rim of Endeavour Crater)
Schiaparelli Crater
3°37’S 15°07’E (Ares 4 best guess - 148 km from the bottom of the ramp)
You can use the navigation tools in the upper right of the image viewer to navigate around and zoom in. Or, if you downloaded the placemarks from my website, look in the Places Panel to the left of your screen for a folder called “Temporary Places”. Click it open using the little arrow or plus sign and you should see a folder called “The Martian”. Click it open and the locations on the map will be listed. You can double click on each one to zoom in to that site or region.
Watney’s first excursion was to recover Pathfinder in order to communicate with Earth. Pathfinder’s landing site can be explored by clicking on “Mars Pathfinder Lander” in the “Rovers and Landers” folder under “Mars Gallery” in the Layers Panel. Double click on the “Presidential Panorama” in the Layers Panel, or the camera in the image to see what Mars looks like from Pathfinder’s perspective. Does it look like the same place Watney found Pathfinder? If you do the same for Opportunity, be sure to look at the southern end of Opportunity’s path as this little rover traveled more than 25 miles since it landed in 2004 and continues to move and function today.
Watney’s second excursion to Ares 4 crossed a good portion of Mars - 3235 km as the crow flies across a planet with a diameter of 6794 km - nearly half way across Mars. Notice the smooth terrain in Acidalia Planitia and the cratered landscape in Arabia Terra. Open the “Colorized Terrain” map in the “Global Maps” folder in the Layers Panel to appreciate the differences in these regions even more!
You can also find Mawrth Valley using the Colorized Terrain map. The valley runs from 26°16’N 20°13’W to 19°50’N 14°26’W. Do you see it? You can mark it using the Path Tool in the Toolbar. It was once considered as a landing site for Curiosity. The Colorized Terrain map is also a really easy way to find Valles Marineris and Olympus Mons - both of which are on the opposite side of Mars from where Watney lived and traveled.
To find Entrance Crater, zoom out to a view that includes Marth Crater and Schiaparelli Crater and use the Path Tool or the Ruler to draw a line between the crater centers. The line will cross very near a small crater on the northwest rim of Schiaparelli. This small crater was formed by an asteroid that hit Mars after Schiaparelli was formed. Now click on the Colored Terrain map again to see that just counterclockwise from Entrance Crater is an area along the rim that is not steep (or dark in the image which indicates shadows from the steep terrain). This is the ramp where the rover tipped over
Note the tiny grey rectangles in and around Schiaparelli Crater. Zoom in on these to see very high-resolution views of the Martian surface taken by an imager called HiRISE. Can you imagine what formed these strange landscapes? HiRISE was targeted at the Ares 3 landing site just for fun (http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ESP_040776_2115), but the image does not yet appear on the Google Earth map.
Back on Earth and aside from the real space centers - JPL, Johnson Space Center and Cape Canaveral (Kennedy Space Center works best on Google Earth) - you can find the Chinese launch site, Jiuquan, by searching for "40.97N 100.28E". Situated in the middle of the Gobi Desert, it looks to be about as remote as Mars.
The Martian was filmed in Wadi Rum in Jordan - a film location for many movies set on Mars. Search for “Wadi Rum, Jordan” in the Search Panel. Zoom out to about an eye alt of 45 mi to see the entire region. A wadi is a valley or dry river. The reddish areas are caused by iron oxide in the sand, which make them perfect for Mars-like settings. Zoom in on the valleys in the reddish areas and imagine Watney and his extensive camera crew following one of these wadis during filming. JPL has their own Mars Yard for testing their rovers. Search for 34°12’59”N 118°10’11.62”W using the Search Panel and zoom to an eye alt of 1660 ft to find it. Use the Clock Tool to go back to 4/2013 and you should see Curiosity’s twin out for a test run.
Hey, that was a bit nerdy but I hope you followed along. If you appreciated the technical aspects of the book by Andy Weir and the movie, I am sure this was easy. If you would like to learn more about Google Earth and cool places to explore, check out Googling Earth by JoBea Holt on Amazon.
This article is a lot more fun if you have Google Earth open on your computer so you can see the sites and paths in The Martian. Your first option is to look at a path that someone else made - me. Click on the Mars planet at the bottom of this webpage. If you have Google Earth on your computer, it will automatically open up and show you Mark’s path - on Earth. Look at the toolbar above the image viewer and click on the little planet. Choose Mars from the drop-down menu and you will be redirected to Mars. The complete path should now show up on Mars.
Or - if you already know how to use Google Earth - you can placemark each location yourself and draw your own path around craters and other obstacles Watney encountered:
31.2°N 28.5°W (Ares 3)
Pathfinder
Rutherford Crater
Trouvelot Crater (corner of Watney’s Triangle)
Becquerel Crater (corner of Watney’s Triangle)
Marth Crater (corner of Watney’s Triangle)
2°18’45”S 5°20’49”W (Opportunity’s current location peeking over the rim of Endeavour Crater)
Schiaparelli Crater
3°37’S 15°07’E (Ares 4 best guess - 148 km from the bottom of the ramp)
You can use the navigation tools in the upper right of the image viewer to navigate around and zoom in. Or, if you downloaded the placemarks from my website, look in the Places Panel to the left of your screen for a folder called “Temporary Places”. Click it open using the little arrow or plus sign and you should see a folder called “The Martian”. Click it open and the locations on the map will be listed. You can double click on each one to zoom in to that site or region.
Watney’s first excursion was to recover Pathfinder in order to communicate with Earth. Pathfinder’s landing site can be explored by clicking on “Mars Pathfinder Lander” in the “Rovers and Landers” folder under “Mars Gallery” in the Layers Panel. Double click on the “Presidential Panorama” in the Layers Panel, or the camera in the image to see what Mars looks like from Pathfinder’s perspective. Does it look like the same place Watney found Pathfinder? If you do the same for Opportunity, be sure to look at the southern end of Opportunity’s path as this little rover traveled more than 25 miles since it landed in 2004 and continues to move and function today.
Watney’s second excursion to Ares 4 crossed a good portion of Mars - 3235 km as the crow flies across a planet with a diameter of 6794 km - nearly half way across Mars. Notice the smooth terrain in Acidalia Planitia and the cratered landscape in Arabia Terra. Open the “Colorized Terrain” map in the “Global Maps” folder in the Layers Panel to appreciate the differences in these regions even more!
You can also find Mawrth Valley using the Colorized Terrain map. The valley runs from 26°16’N 20°13’W to 19°50’N 14°26’W. Do you see it? You can mark it using the Path Tool in the Toolbar. It was once considered as a landing site for Curiosity. The Colorized Terrain map is also a really easy way to find Valles Marineris and Olympus Mons - both of which are on the opposite side of Mars from where Watney lived and traveled.
To find Entrance Crater, zoom out to a view that includes Marth Crater and Schiaparelli Crater and use the Path Tool or the Ruler to draw a line between the crater centers. The line will cross very near a small crater on the northwest rim of Schiaparelli. This small crater was formed by an asteroid that hit Mars after Schiaparelli was formed. Now click on the Colored Terrain map again to see that just counterclockwise from Entrance Crater is an area along the rim that is not steep (or dark in the image which indicates shadows from the steep terrain). This is the ramp where the rover tipped over
Note the tiny grey rectangles in and around Schiaparelli Crater. Zoom in on these to see very high-resolution views of the Martian surface taken by an imager called HiRISE. Can you imagine what formed these strange landscapes? HiRISE was targeted at the Ares 3 landing site just for fun (http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ESP_040776_2115), but the image does not yet appear on the Google Earth map.
Back on Earth and aside from the real space centers - JPL, Johnson Space Center and Cape Canaveral (Kennedy Space Center works best on Google Earth) - you can find the Chinese launch site, Jiuquan, by searching for "40.97N 100.28E". Situated in the middle of the Gobi Desert, it looks to be about as remote as Mars.
The Martian was filmed in Wadi Rum in Jordan - a film location for many movies set on Mars. Search for “Wadi Rum, Jordan” in the Search Panel. Zoom out to about an eye alt of 45 mi to see the entire region. A wadi is a valley or dry river. The reddish areas are caused by iron oxide in the sand, which make them perfect for Mars-like settings. Zoom in on the valleys in the reddish areas and imagine Watney and his extensive camera crew following one of these wadis during filming. JPL has their own Mars Yard for testing their rovers. Search for 34°12’59”N 118°10’11.62”W using the Search Panel and zoom to an eye alt of 1660 ft to find it. Use the Clock Tool to go back to 4/2013 and you should see Curiosity’s twin out for a test run.
Hey, that was a bit nerdy but I hope you followed along. If you appreciated the technical aspects of the book by Andy Weir and the movie, I am sure this was easy. If you would like to learn more about Google Earth and cool places to explore, check out Googling Earth by JoBea Holt on Amazon.
Click on Mars to see my Google Earth path of Mark Watney's travels on Mars:
After Google Earth opens, use the planet tool to change from Earth to Mars.
Must use Google Chrome!