On May 25, 2008 NASA returned to the Red Planet in the form of Phoenix, a stationary probe lander. Its mission: Search for environments suitable for microbial life and study the history of water on Mars.

About as quickly as the spacecraft touched down in the Martian arctic, Bernie Szukalski of the ArcGIS Explorer Team had a posting describing a way to begin studying the mission in 3D with ArcGIS Explorer. He followed it up the next day with a more robust write-up of using Martian GIS data services from the USGS PIGWAD site.

Both entries showed how easy it is to add a wide range of content to ArcGIS Explorer, but both left me wondering: “Where’s Phoenix?” Likewise, I found myself asking the question: “where have other NASA missions landed?” Noodling around on the PIGWAD site, the NASA Missions page, and Wikipedia Mars entries netted me locational information for six NASA landings: the Phoenix, the rovers—Spirit and Opportunity, Pathfinder and its rover Sojourner, and Viking 1 & 2.

Since I wanted to include my own information, I decided to create a table with Martian lat/lon coordinates and a few other items which I could import into my project and expand in the future if I wish. (Download the 4KB marslandingsite_URLs.csv.)

Adding in a few layers from the PIGWAD server, http://webgis.wr.usgs.gov/, I have the beginning of my own Mars project. The image below highlights the locations of four NASA landings with a quick photo snag from the NASA Photojournal site to see what it’s like around each spot.

I also wanted to understand a bit more about the Martian arctic region in which the Phoenix had landed. With a bit more exploration of various NASA, USGS, University of Arizona, and Wikipedia sites I was introduced to two Martian features—Planum Boreum (the high north polar plain) and the surrounding Vastitas Borealis (an immense lowland plain). The Phoenix landed in part of the latter.

Using the ArcGIS Explorer “Notes” task, I added both features to my project, and created another Phoenix point complete with artist rendition of the lander on the surface. Hoping to discern some aspect of the Vastitas Borealis, I added Martian geology from the PIGWAD site and made the main image a bit transparent.

Looks like more Martian exploring yet to do.

- George Dailey, ESRI Education Manager