The Scars of Mars

Everyone has their reasons to get to Mars. For MOM, it was the sheer audacity of carrying a billion dreams to a destination far beyond the celestial realms of human imagination. For Alia Bhatt, it could be the attendant bliss of landing on a planet full of chocolate bars. For someone like me, it’s the joy of seeing a topography teeming with interesting names.

Talking of topography, the red planet is one massive scarface with a staggering 635,000 impact craters caused by crashing meteorites, asteroids and comets. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has taken the pains to label around 1000 of these craters. A quick glance at their nomenclature will make your day.

At least 8 craters have been named after Indian cities. They include Amet, Bhor, Broach, Kakori, Poona, Rayadurg, Sandila and Wer. If you’re scratching your head as to why they chose low profile cities, well here’s the logic: all the small craters on Mars are a nod to places on earth with a population of 100,000 or less. Poona, with 5 million residents, lucked out though. Just like Madrid, Johannesburg, Canberra, Bristol and Amsterdam. But I am not complaining.

The Bigger Craters list reads like an all-star line-up of scientists and explorers. Apart from the usual suspects such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Galileo Galilei, Tycho Brahe, Isaac Newton, Ptolemy, Kepler, Columbus, and Balboa, the beauty of the entire thing is, one can find an assortment of littler giants who pique your curiosity. There is: Wilhelm Beer, the man credited with creation of the first globe of Mars; Hipparchus, the founder of trigonometry; Nathaniel Green, an astronomer whose pencil drawings of Mars was world famous; and Carl Sagan, the brain behind the Mariner9 and Viking missions.

The only Hollywood star to be immortalised is Orson Welles, the man who caused a scare by broadcasting the Mars Attack saga ‘The War of the Worlds’. Star Trek fans would be pleased to know that Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the TV series we all adore, has a crater in his name along with fellow writers Isaac Asimov, HG Wells, and Edgar Rice Burroughs (aka the Tarzan guy). Although Arthur. C. Clarke is a strange omission considering his first novel was titled ‘Sands of Mars’. Who knows they might name a desert after him, someday!