Our WASSEC centrepiece artwork. A scientifically accurate landscape of Mars 3.5 billion year ago…. how did we reconstruct this?
During 2024, we engaged Francesca Cary, Astrobiologist and established artist and scientist to work with students on an exciting and unique project for the Space Science Education Centre.
Francesca worked with students from Joseph Banks Secondary College across STEM and Art to create a visual experience of what it would be like to stand on Mars billions of years ago when the planet was young and had the potential to originate life. This project would visualise what we cannot see with our eyes or technology, but we can see by integrating scientific data into imagination. The project outcome would deliver a scientifically accurate landscape of Mars, 3.5 billion year ago.
Francesca delivered workshops, lectures, hands on activities, was a guest speaker and panellist, and worked in classrooms with students and teachers. Francesca provided professional learning for staff in scientific concepts regarding Mars with comparisons to Earth and worked with staff to plan ways to integrate scientific concepts into art, provided us with information about Mars, and ideas of how teachers could use this information to inform their planning of learning activities for students in Science, Space Academy classes, Aspire classes, Integrated Studies and Visual Arts.
Francesca presented her artwork “Lake Jezero, Mars” Visualising Mars, 2024 to the College to exhibit in the Western Australian Space Science Education Centre foyer. The artwork is a scientific and creative piece, with collaborators from across the globe, providing the science to inform the artwork.
Astrobiologist, Francesca Cary.
Francesca Cary
“Lake Jezero, Mars” Visualising Mars, 2024
3.5 billion years ago, this is what the surface of Mars could have looked like if you were standing (or swimming) in Lake Jezero, Mars. With every detail based on scientific data, this artwork is a reconstruction of the ancient environment of Jezero crater – the landing site of NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover – that shows you what can otherwise only be visualized by the minds of those who study martian rocks. Mars was not always barren, old, dusty and red, but was once dynamic, young, flowing with water, with the potential to originate life. While Mars may not have sustained these conditions for long, the planet was once eerily similar to the early Earth, and we can learn a lot about our own planet by studying Mars.
Featured in the art:
- Mars’s two moons, Phobos and Deimos (simulated ancient transit across the sky)
- Planets Earth & Venus in the sky
- High altitude / cirrus CO2 clouds
- Lower altitude / cumulonimbus rain clouds
- Blue skies and red sunset (in contrast to the orange skies and blue sunsets on Mars today)
- Fresh volcanic lava flows of ‘Maaz’, a geological unit characterized by NASA’s Perseverance rover
- Fresh water slowly filling up the basin of the crater from the crater’s famous delta
Graphic Design enables us to produce a ‘then & now’ piece for the Mars surface.
