Improvements in technology have allowed us to map Earth’s surface in ever-increasing detail. These advances are now being used on other planets in our solar system, allowing scientists to see them like never before.
This interactive map of Mars sets a new standard for planetary mapping. Created by Caltech’s Bruce Murray Laboratory for Planetary Visualization, it’s the highest resolution global scale map of Mars ever created.
The interactive 3D map lets you pan, zoom, and tilt to explore the topography of Mars. You can see vivid features like craters, canyons, valleys, and even dried-up river channels.
Bookmarks help you navigate to areas of interest across the Red Planet. You can find Olympus Mons (the tallest volcano in the solar system) and the craters where Mars rovers have landed. You can even toggle on layers, like rover tracks, to see where they’ve traveled on Mars. Clicking a bookmark rotates the map, giving you a sense of how these places relate to each other.
The map was created by stitching together more than 110,000 images. These images were captured by the Context Camera (CTX) onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The MRO first arrived at Mars in 2006 and still operates today.
While images from Mars have been available for years, they’ve never been this accessible. This map makes it easy for anyone to explore our celestial neighbor and is a great model for making scientific data more usable.
More to Explore
- Learn more about how this interactive map was made.
- Download the images used to make this map.
