Terra incognita refer to the hypothesized continent Terra Australis Incognita ("The unknown land of the South"), as seen in the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum map by Abraham Ortelius (1570). During the 19th century "terra incognita" disappeared from maps of the earth, since both the coastlines and the inner parts of the continents had been fully explored. But the bottoms of the seas remain mostly un-mapped, as do many other land surfaces in the solar system. The phrase is now also used metaphorically by various researchers to describe any unexplored subject or field of research. For more history of the terms, see Terra Australis,
Solar System in fiction and that Mars could hardly support any macroscopic life forms on its surface, much less an advanced civilization. In the 1980s it was shown that the surfaces of Jupiter's moons were just as hostile to life. More recent fiction focused on the Solar System has thus tended to address its exploration for purposes such as terraforming, the engineering of planets for human habitation, than the possibility of any existing life. The following works or series use multiple planets and other locations within the Solar System as their primary settings: Solar System in fiction The Solar System and its various bodies