Essays Written for the Planetary Society Marslink Project

Mike Caplinger, Malin Space Science Systems

The Marslink Project was an effort supported by The Planetary Society to teach basic principles of planetary science to high school and middle school students. (The original plan was to use Mars Observer data, as it was received, to stimulate students' interests. Sadly, this plan has had to be abandoned -- for the moment.)

As part of my participation in the Marslink Project and any future continuation, I've written the following essays on various Mars-related topics. However, this is not "official" Marslink material. I hope to put one essay out every two months. Comments and topic suggestions are appreciated.

I used the following references while writing this material:

The Geology of Mars, Thomas Mutch et al, Princeton University Press, 1976.

Viking Orbiter Views of Mars, The Viking Orbiter Imaging Team, NASA SP-441, 1980.

Earthlike Planets, Bruce Murray, Michael Malin, and Ronald Greeley, W.H. Freeman and Company, 1981.

Mars, Hugh Kieffer et al, University of Arizona Press, 1992.

Notes

Many of the spacecraft images included here, especially those in the page on craters, are oriented such that the light is coming from a source at the bottom of the image, rather than the top. Since we are used to objects being lit from above, this can result in a common optical illusion that causes craters to look like hills and vice versa. Given that craters are depressions and most of the volcanoes are raised hills with depressions at their summits, try to figure out where the light is actually coming from in each image.

These pages are very image-rich; you may want to disable image loading if you're on a slow link (although you'll miss a lot of the content.)

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Mike Caplinger (mc@msss.com)