![]() ![]() Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the orbiter and collaborates with JPL to operate it. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the MRO Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, built and operates CTX, one of six instruments on the orbiter. This map of the Red Planet shows Jezero Crater, where NASAs Mars 2020 rover is scheduled to land in February 2021. In addition to covering 99.1 percent of the surface of Mars at least once, this camera has observed more than 60 percent of Mars more than once, checking for changes over time and providing stereo pairs for 3-D modeling of the surface. A still-image mosaic, PIA21488, shows the final frame of this animation at greater resolution, though still far less than in individual CTX observations.Īs of March 2017, the Context Camera has taken about 90,000 images since the spacecraft began examining Mars from orbit in late 2006. From Mars orbit, each observation by CTX covers a swath of ground about 18.6 miles (30 kilometers) wide, at a resolution of about 20 feet (6 meters) per pixel. ![]() This sequence of images is presented in reduced resolution to show the global coverage. Each frame adds the locations of one month's worth of CTX observations. This animation tracks how the coverage accumulated over the period from late 2006 to early 2017 to form a nearly complete map of Mars. No other camera has ever shown us so much of Mars in such high resolution. The compiled images from CTX now cover more than 99 percent of Mars. It follows on the heels of many prior collaborative projects, including previous releases of Google Mars and Google Moon on the web, and Sky in Google Earth.The Context Camera (CTX) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has been taking images of Mars for more than 10 years, sharp enough to show the shapes of features as small as a tennis court. Mars in Google Earth is a direct result of Google's Space Act Agreement with NASA, which enabled NASA Ames researchers to work closely with Google engineers to collect and format data layers for Mars. This gives it the potential to be a very powerful tool for the international planetary science community. And because Mars is a part of Google Earth, scientists can easily use it for visualization, collaboration, and outreach, by authoring their own KML data layers for Mars. We hope that Mars in Google Earth proves useful to Martians, but we also hope it helps those on Earth appreciate the beauty and science behind Earth's nearest planetary neighbor. But note that Street View's current face-blurring technology is only calibrated for human faces, so (at least for the time being) we haven't blurred any Martian faces in NASA's imagery. The rover panoramas are displayed in Street View style, allowing you to both pan around and zoom all the way in to see details. Last, but certainly not least, we've made it easy to follow NASA rover tracks and view 360-degree panoramas of the Martian surface, taken by the rovers. They can search for and view many well-known Martian landmarks, like the face on Mars. They also have easy access to visible and infrared global maps, a browsable layer of the most interesting high-resolution satellite images, and excerpts from a travel guide for the planet. Now they can see 3D views of Valles Marineris on Mars, which is 10 times as long and 7 times as wide as Earth's largest canyon. Martian users will definitely appreciate the fact that they're no longer stuck viewing Earth's inadequately-sized geological features. Google's Martian userbase isn't growing very rapidly these days (exact numbers are confidential), but in anticipation of the day that it does: we're pleased to announce that this week's Google Earth 5.0 release includes a new mode dedicated to Mars - and yes, even Earthlings can enjoy it. But for some time now, the Google Earth team has failed to prioritize the obvious needs of a very select but important potential audience: Martians. Google Earth has done much to help humans understand their planet, opening the eyes of many to new views of places near and far. ![]()
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