Android phones get everywhere. They can even visit Mars to locate the lost Beagle 2 lander! The red planet is about 56,000,000km away from Earth. It would take you 8 months to reach the Martian surface, and it cost the British scientists behind the Beagle 2 Mars Lander £45m to do just that, but they lost contact with their robotic baby and it’s now stranded out there collecting dust.
Want to see exactly where? You don’t need a team of astrophysicists or a multimillion pound research fund. Grab an Android phone and you can skip that 56,000,000km journey with a few taps.
Android Invasion! Everything you need to know about Android phones
Gravitate to Google Mars
Google Mars is a map created by Google and NASA researchers that shows you the red planet in three different ways. You can navigate to it through in the browser of your Android phone to take a look. Just browse to www.google.com/mars and you’ll be transported to the red planet.
In the top right hand corner of the map, you’ll get three options to choose from. Elevation will show you a colour coded relief map of Mars so you can see which bits are towering mountains, and which are plummeting ravines.
Visible mode will show you a realistic view of what you’d see if you were looking down on mars from a low orbit, and Infrared mode will show you a heat map of Mars. The best myth-busting Mars fact we found out from Google Mars? The red planet is actually the colour of butterscotch, not crimson as we’d always believed.
Discover the final destination of Beagle 2
In the top right hand corner of Google Mars, there’s a list of Martian points of interest (you may need to use the Android browser’s zoom function to find it). Select Spacecraft and you’ll be given a list of man-made craft currently residing on Mars.
Go to the bottom of the list that appears and you’ll find the Beagle 2. Tap on it and the map will move to where the Beagle 2 Mars Lander is lying. In just a few minutes with your Android phone, you’re exploring Mars and even tracked down the long lost lander!
Visit YouTube to see videos of the Mars landers in action
Because Android can handle Flash video on the go, you can use YouTube to see the footage sent back from the surface of Mars. Fire up the built-in YouTube Android app and search for “martian lander” and you’ll be able to see video from NASA’s Phoenix Lander which succeeded in sending images back to Earth. Search for Beagle 2 and you can see pop band Blur recording their ode to the lost British Mars lander.
