Amy Wootton and Chantel Ludick placed third in the International Cartographic Association’s (ICA) Mars Exploration Zone Map Design Competition.  NASA is planning a space mission to Mars in the 2030s. To support this mission, the planetary science community proposed 47 landing sites or exploration zones in 2015. The aim of the ICA’s Mars Exploration Zone Map Design Competition is to contribute to the mapping of each of these landing sites to aid in the selection of the final landing site.

Amy and Chantel mapped the Noachis Terra Chloride. Noachis Terra Chloride is well known for its abundance in chloride deposits, and a crater found within this region of interest contains features correlated with subsurface water ice. The purpose of this map is to create a visual representation of the Noachis Terra Chloride Exploration Zone, in order to aid explorers by mapping the selected exploration zone.

For this project, Amy and Chantel placed third in the student section of the competition and received a geological map of Mars as the prize.

Final Map produced for the competition