BONNIE MARS
NASA scientists name parts of the red planet after Scottish location
THIS stunning area of Mars has been named after a corner of Scotland by NASA scientists.
Experts at the space agency dubbed the area the “Sands of Forvie”, which is near Ellon in Aberdeenshire.
And it’s not the only part of the red planet to be given a Scottish name.
David Brown, an area ranger in Formartine, wrote to Dr Abigail Fraeman at the Mars Science Laboratory about the Scottish names
The scientist – deputy project chief for Curiosity, the Mars rover that sent back amazing pictures of the planet – replied: “Each NASA Mars mission decides on a unique convention for choosing feature names.
“For Curiosity, we divided our landing area into quadrants and each is named after a region that contains famous geologic features on Earth.
“We use the quadrant name as the theme to choose target names.
“Curiosity is currently in the Torridon quadrant, so all the names we’ve been using are related to Scottish towns, lochs and regions of geologic interest.
“We have a couple of science team members who have done field work in Scotland – John Bridges, and Sanjeev Gupta. They led the effort to collect target names that fit this theme. It’s been great fun for me to learn more about Scottish places during the last few years.”
She added: “One of the most striking features in the Torridon quadrant is a giant sheet of sand (1 km wide) and ‘Sands of Forvie’ seemed like an appropriate name for this feature. The ‘Sands of Forvie’ have been visible to Curiosity from many locations for months, and we had the opportunity to get up close and study this feature about a year ago.”
David said: “I’m chuffed to bits that this has generated so much interest in our corner of Aberdeenshire. It was great to receive such a comprehensive reply and wonderful photographs.
“The postcard is a beautiful image. I love the idea of a ‘postcard from Mars’.”