Martian soil perchlorate readings being caused by terrestrial sources, which at the time were thought could have migrated from the spacecraft either into samples or the instrumentation. However, each new lander has confirmed their presence in the soil locally and the "Mars Odyssey" orbiter confirmed they are spread globally across the entire surface of the planet. While our understanding of Martian soils is extremely rudimentary, their diversity may raise the question of how we might compare them with our Earth-based soils. Applying an Earth-based system is largely debatable but a simple option is to distinguish the (largely) biotic Earth from the abiotic
Sagan Planet Walk Sagan, Bill Nye, narrated a podcast tour of the Planet Walk in 2006 which can be accessed free by calling 703.637.6237 as you walk through the scale-model representation of the Solar System. The models of the Solar System, in order: The Sagan Planet Walk has inspired the creation of other scale-model Solar Systems in the United States. Sagan Planet Walk The Sciencenter's Sagan Planet Walk is a walkable scale model of the Solar System, located in Ithaca, New York. The model scales the entire Solar System—both planet size and distances between them—down to one five billionth of its actual size.