This incredible map of Mars really is out of this world

Toby Meyjes

This map of Mars has been made by Ordnance Survey and has been published online (Picture: Ordnance Survey)

It’s a question we’ve all asked ourselves…’I’ve done a Matt Damon and got stuck on Mars, but how on earth am I going to tell one crater from the next?!’.
Well, hopefully this easy-to-use map of the red planet will go some way towards solving that problem.
It’s been produced by some helpful chaps at Ordnance Survey (OS) who have used data published by Nasa.

The Ordnance Survey covers 7% of the surface of Mars (Picture: Flickr)

And aside from going a long way towards improving the prospects of your next extraterrestrial day out it will have a practical purpose too.
The map, which covers 7 per cent of the planet’s surface, has been printed for a British scientist helping to plan the next Mars landing project.in 2019.
In the meantime, it’s been uploaded to the OS Flickr account for everyone to enjoy.
OS cartographer Chris Wesson told the BBC: ‘It was a little hard at first to actually understand the data itself in terms of things like the elevation and the scale and so on.
‘But actually the physical process was almost identical to what was used to make an Earth map, or any OS map.’