Mercury - Weird Terrain

THE PROJECT
Space tourism is still a long ways off, but it’s not hard to imagine that someday, tourists will visit the natural geological landmarks of other worlds much like they tour the Grand Canyon, Mount Everest or Ayers Rock. Each of these great tourist destinations needs a classic retro travel poster to entice visitors. Until the day people settle off world and make their own destinations many of these may be the places that people will want to travel too. I hope that these posters can inspire people to think beyond our world to the limitless possibilities of the Universe.

WEIRD TERRAIN
At the antipode of the Caloris Basin lies a large region of unusual, hilly and furrowed terrain, sometimes called “Weird Terrain”. The favoured hypothesis for the origin of this geomorphologic unit is that shock waves generated during the impact traveled around the planet, and when they converged at the basin’s antipode (180 degrees away) the high stresses were capable of fracturing the surface. A much less favoured idea was that this terrain formed as a result of the convergence of ejecta at this basin’s antipode.

The Mercury Series 1 of 2