A map of Mars. Every crater, cone and dune on it holds one of an estimated 781,343 people who died in the first year after the US aid stopped.
The United States shut down the foreign aid agency in 2025 resulting in an estimated 781,343 deaths, 518,428 of them children. ImpactCounter, a model at Boston University, tracked the consequences for one year. Pneumonia, malnutrition, diarrhea, malaria, HIV, tuberculosis. Medicine, nets and food that no longer arrived.
The man who ran the shutdown wants Mars. This map gives Mars to the people who died. It holds every crater larger than a kilometre (385,049), every pitted cone of the northern plains (250,381 small volcanoes of mud and lava, mapped in 2024) and the 147,135 largest dunes of the northern sands.
Only 1,240 craters carry official names. Each of the other places holds one person: adults in the craters, children in the cones, as well as the smallest craters and the dunes. Every one of the 781,343 has a place. Anyone who knew one of them can propose a name for a place, which are reviewed before they appear.
The toll is a modelled estimate of excess deaths, in line with a study in The Lancet. No list of names exists — most of these people were never recorded anywhere. So each place holds a designation: adult or child, and the disease.
Concept: Andri Snær Magnason. Made by ΛRK.
Deaths model: ImpactCounter (B. Nichols,
Boston University) · The Lancet (2025)
Craters: Robbins & Hynek Mars crater database (2020 release)
Cones: Chen et al., A Global Database of Pitted Cones on Mars (2024, CC BY 4.0)
Wind: NASA Perseverance, SuperCam microphone, Sol 4, 22 Feb 2021 · one laser impact every 40 seconds: same microphone, Sol 12 (NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/CNRS/ISAE-Supaero)
Dunes: Rubanenko et al., Morphometrics of barchan dunes on Mars (2022, CC BY 4.0)
Relief: MOLA (NASA/JPL/GSFC) + HRSC (ESA/DLR/FU Berlin) blended hillshade via NASA Trek
Official names: IAU Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature (USGS)
Surface: NASA/Viking imagery via Solar System Scope (CC BY 4.0)