The European Beagle 2 lander will touch down in the Isidis Plaintia of Mars in December. Scientists hope to find signs of water, and maybe even signs of life. No one knows what is there or what was once there.

Kees Veenenbos has imagined it, though. Using real topographical data from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) instrument on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, Veenenbos renders images of Martian geography and then adds in the water he thinks might have once existed.

The scene contains lakes with muddy ice at the shores. There is a bluish tint to the atmosphere. The Beagle 2 landing site is straight ahead between the two larger craters in the plain.

Did Mars ever have standing water like this? Scientists aren't sure. But if so, then life might have had a chance to get going.

"The surface looked quite different than the red dry deserted look of Mars nowadays," Veenenbos said in an e-mail interview. His visualization, he figures, "gives hope to the explorers that this is a place where they might find where they are looking for: water and signs of life, ancient or present." [More Mars renderings by Veenenbos]

-- Robert Roy Britt