Life on Mars

Google has a continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds and organize their information. They have a great map of where some guys you may have heard of landed and have plans to establish a lunar base (Google Copernicus)too. Google Moon was launched on the anniversary of the first moon landing by Apollo 11. Google Copernicus is scheduled to open on the centennial anniversary of that same landing–July 20, 2069.

While that’s impressive, Google never rests on their laurels and now they’ve extended their reach to the red planet.

But unlike the lunar base and Google Moon, Google Mars is much closer to the real thing. Posted this morning at Google Labs, Google Mars allows you to view the planet in three ways: elevation, “visible” and infrared. Points are plotted not by cities, states and countries like they are here on Earth but by regions, spacecraft, stories, mountains, canyons, dunes, plains, ridges and craters.

The plan according to Barry over at Search Engine Watch, is to add a Google Earth-like desktop feature for Mars sometime in the future. In the About Google Mars page, you can learn more about the project and Mars, including the fact that the red planet really is more the color of butterscotch.

Yum, butterscotch.

Susan Esparza is former managing editor at Bruce Clay Inc., and has written extensively for clients and internal publications. Along with Bruce Clay, she is co-author of the first edition of Search Engine Optimization All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies.

See Susan's author page for links to connect on social media.