NASA and Google bring Mars to PCs everywhere

location based services

With Google's help, web surfers can now navigate from the plains of Meridiani to the Proctor Crater Dunes on Mars as though they were two local destinations.

Arizona State University's Mars Space Flight Facility and Google teamed up last summer to produce Google Mars (www.google.com/mars/), a mapping tool released Monday, which allows users to view and scroll across the surface of the Red Planet, visiting its many landmarks.

"The goal here is to bring Mars to the general public, to give them access to a tool that lets them explore Mars in the same way that Google Earth lets you explore the Earth," says Robert Burnham, spokesperson for the Mars Space Flight Facility in Tempe, Arizona, US.

More than 17,000 images from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey orbiters fed the planet-spanning mosaic, which can be viewed as a colour-coded relief map showing surface elevation, a collage of optical images or as a product of infrared measurements. The software that allowed the individual images to be pieced together was written by Noel Gorelick from Arizona State University (ASU).

Users can see tagged features such as mountains, canyons, dunes, plains, ridges and craters on the Martian surface. Each tag comes with additional information such as coordinates, size, and date of discovery. And if a particular feature is named after a person or a place, there is information about its namesake.

Landing sites
The infrared map is pieced together from images taken by Mars Odyssey's Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) and includes details as small as 230 metres across. Cool spots on the surface appear in dark tones while warmer areas appear bright.

"Mars scientists the world over use THEMIS photos," says ASU planetary geologist Phil Christensen, principal investigator for the camera. "It's great that everyone everywhere can now explore this neighbour world using their own computer browser."

The infrared map also highlights four Martian areas that show even greater detail - the volcano Olympus Mons, the "Grand Canyon" of Mars Valles Marineris, and the landing sites of NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Digital Image Animation Laboratory used the Valles Marineris data, showing details just 100 metres across, to produce a new simulation, which was also released on Monday. Entitled "Flight Into Mariner Valley", it takes viewers on a virtual flight through the great chasm, revealing its impact craters, rocky spurs and carved out gullies.

Print this pageEmai