Space · How it works
Land on Mars
Red dust plains, the great canyons, white ice caps, the highest volcano of the system and the colonists' abandoned bases, under a butterscotch sky.
In the game
How to get it
Take your ship to Mars's orbit, then a rocket down to the ground. Wear a sealed suit before you open the hatch: the air of Mars cannot be breathed.
What it is for
Aresite in the walls of the great canyons, polar ice, the colonists' abandoned bases and their old drones, and the methane that makes the rest of the voyage cheaper.
Why it exists
The first planet after the Moon: cold, red, and full of what the first colonists left behind.
The same text the game shows in its progress tree and on the item's sheet (I).
What you find
- Red plains of rust dust, dark basalt boulders, old craters worn by the wind.
- Dune seas of dark umber sand, their crests across the wind.
- Cratered highlands in the south, rugged and old.
- The great canyons near the equator: rifts 100 to 400 m wide and over a hundred metres deep, walls of flat red, ochre and cream layers, crimson aresite in them.
- The polar caps beyond about 72 degrees: layered ice and white frost of frozen carbon dioxide, cut by spiral troughs.
- The giant volcano at 18° N, 134° W, and a few lesser ones: see Top of the giant volcano.
- The colonists' bases: see A colonists' base.
Dangers
- No air: a space suit or a planet's suit, or a shut room of your base.
- Cold: about -70 °C at dawn, up to +15 °C at an equatorial noon, colder toward the caps (down to about -130 °C on a polar night). A space suit stands -150 °C; the Thermal suit more.
- Dust storms: a rusty fog rolls over a whole region for a while; you can lose your way in it. See Martian dust storm.
Good to know
Gravity is 3.71 m/s² (0.38 g): you jump about two and a half times higher. A Martian day lasts about 26 minutes.
On the progress path
MR1MarsMain path
- This stepMR1 · Land on Mars
- NextMR2 · Colonist drones: aresite chips
Sub-actions (counted in your progress)
- Explore Mars — A colonists' base, Polar ice, Aresite in a canyon wall, A dust storm lived through, A colonist's logbook