The first people to set foot on Mars will be able to adorn its surface with a Martian flag. The tricolour symbol has been adopted by the Mars Society, a group of Martian exploration enthusiasts, and made its maiden voyage into space on board NASA’s space shuttle Discovery just before Christmas.
Representing the primary colours of the spectrum, the flag’s pattern of red, green and blue vertical stripes was suggested by Pascal Lee, who is heading the Mars Society’s effort to build a prototype Martian research station on Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic (New Scientist, 16 January 1999, p…
