Torridon 'twin' is really out of this world!
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MARTIAN links to Wester Ross just got even stronger – after a second area on the Red Planet was given a name linked to one of the Highland beauty spots.
Nasa’s Curiosity rover recently entered a region on Mars scientists have dubbed the ‘Torridon quadrant’ in homage to the spectacular north-west Highland locale.
The reason for the nod stems from the Wester Ross area’s red sandstones, which have long fascinated geologists and are thought to be a good analogue for the type of sediments being encountered by the rover as it explores Mars.
It’s the second such link between Ross-shire and Mars, after Glenelg famously twinned itself with the Red Planet following Nasa’s decision to give an interesting landmark the same name.
And who is to say if further parts of Wester Ross will yet share their names with the dusty russet soils of Earth’s near neighbour – because the arrival of the rover in ‘Torridon’ has led to a flurry of Scottish monikers being used to identify individual landmarks in its terrain.
Everything from the islands of Arran, Muck and Coll to famous mountain summits Goatfell, Ben Loyal and Ben More have leant their names to recent places of interest in the days since the rover began exploring Torridon.
Whiskies too have also made a wee bit of a splash – including Talisker and Laphroaig – even if the ‘water of life’ is the only ‘living’ thing yet found on the desiccated planet’s surface.
And in more recent days the rover has been examining targets dubbed Canna, Aberfoyle, Unst and Morar.
Curiosity is the latest, and largest, in a string of Nasa rovers to explore the Red Planet in recent years.
After landing on the surface in 2012, it has travelled around the interior of Gale Crater – a massive impact crater measuring nearly 100 miles across which has a five-and-a-half kilometre tall mountain at its centre – Mount Sharp.
Also known as Aeolis Mons, this mountain’s flanks contain metre after metre of exposed bedrock, which made it a tantalising target for scientists when they were choosing a landing site for the rover.
They opted to send the probe to the ancient crater as it shows signs that it once contained a lake of liquid water back in the very early history of Mars, when the planet was warmer and believed to have had a much thicker atmosphere.
The mountain’s exposed layers of sediment made it an ideal target for exploring the history of so-called ‘wet Mars’, as they are thought to have preserved billions of years of geological history in their soils.
Curosity, which is nuclear powered and about the size of a family car, is the third rover to have ploughed its way across Mars since the turn of the century.
It followed in the tracks of Spirit and Opportunity, two smaller solar powered rovers which were originally intended to last no more than 90 Martian days, but which stunned their engineers by continuing to operate for many years.
Spirit defied expectations by running from 2004 until 2010, while its incredible twin is still operational – 14 years after it first landed. During their extended mission they made history by discovering the first direct evidence that water once flowed on Mars.
