After the game, roll out a planet

摘要

PEOPLE IN ARIZONA have been strolling on Mars. At Arizona State University^ open house last February, about 700 people toured the Red Planet—stocking feet only—walking around Olympus Mons, the solar system^ tallest mountain, and across Gale and Gusev craters, landing sites for NASA Mars rovers. The features were on a vinyl mat, 95 feet long and 47.5 feet w ide~the size of a standard basketball court. “It’s the entire planet, pole to pole/* says ASU research specialist Jonathon Hill, who chose those dimensions because most schools have a basketball courtor a similar-sized space. The map is a mosaic o f24,000 high-res-linda shinerolution images from the Thermal Emission Imaging System,or THEMIS, an instrum ent on the Mars Odyssey spacecraft,which has been orbiting Mars since 2001.