It doesn't have much of a magnetic field, so it doesn't have a magnetic north pole, but by convention we call the rotational pole that's more-or-less pointing in the same direction as Earth's north pole the Martian north pole.

That rotation is (roughly) about an imaginary line. That line passes through the surface of Mars at a two points, which are called "poles" (from that point on a Martian equinox day you will see the Sun go around the horizon completely).

There are two of those poles, one on each side of the planet. The one that points closer to the constellation Ursa Minor is called "north".

Knowing north helps. Like when one is driving in their car. It helps to know what direction one is moving. Sorta.

What I especially like about this mission is that it cost approx. US$73million, which is peanuts compared to the return on investment. The immense prestige of pulling this off with home grown tech and project design.

India wowed the world with this one, that's for sure.

It's where the Neiman Marcus is located.


"turn left in 739,200,000,000 ft at destination...."

I loved it! So informative and science based.

There was a time when we were leaders in space exploration.

That is in a bit of free fall because of our return to the Robber Baron Era. God forbid the ultra wealthy people and corporations should pay their fair share to aid in the public good and the "Commons".

We got out of low-earth orbit delivery because it was a waste of NASA's talent to keep using them for that.

We currently have six active missions on or orbiting Mars, including the Opportunity rover which has been going strong for over 11 years now. We are the only country to have successfully landed on Mar (Viking 1 & 2, Pathfinder, Phoenix, Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity). We have the only ion drive craft exploring the asteroid belt that is currently orbiting Ceres after orbiting Vesta. We have just flown past Pluto with New Horizons. Cassini is still sending stunning images and data from Saturn and its moons. The Mercury Messenger mission only recently completed. We have a new mission nearing Jupiter (Juno). And this just a small part of current and recent missions. I give credit to countries venturing into space exploration, but we still lead space exploration by a very large margin. Should we do more? Should we not continue to cut NASA budget? Yes and yes, but we have actually done better science when we haven't had the lion's share of funds going into manned space flight. The Space Shuttle was built to save money, but it did the opposite. The Space Station has yet to justify it's existence. Little that has been done there could not have been done with more conventional missions. A manned mission to Mars is just crazy. There are so many issues in which we really don't even know how to start to solve (such as radiation exposure) that to forge ahead and just assume we can solve them would be foolish. The machines NASA makes are amazing and we should be proud that we still lead the world in a few things.