Touring Mars: Cool Data Visualization Lets You Visit the Red Planet
Touring Mars: Cool Data Visualization Lets You Visit the Red Planet
By Hanneke Weitering, Space.com Staff Writer | July 18, 2017 04:00pm ET
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This high-res visualization of the Martian surface shows the inside of Candor Chasma, a canyon in Valles Marineris with walls as high as the Rocky Mountains (15,000 feet, or 4,500 meters).
Credit: OpenSpace/YouTube
Have you ever wished you could go to Mars without taking on the long-term commitment and risks associated with spaceflight? Now you can explore the surface of Mars without leaving the comfort of planet Earth, thanks to troves of imagery from NASA spacecraft and a cool data-visualization software called OpenSpace.
With OpenSpace, you can fly over Martian mountaintops and swoop through the deep canyons of Valles Marineris with the highest-resolution views from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), creating sort of a Google Earth for Mars. And that's just the beginning; the makers of OpenSpace said they aim to ultimately map the entire known universe with dynamic and interactive visualizations created from real scientific data.
Using data and images from the Context Camera (CTX) on MRO and the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, researchers have already mapped 90 percent of the Red Planet's surface down to a resolution of about 20 feet (6 meters) per pixel. Incorporating high-resolution images from the spacecraft's HiRISE camera (High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment), OpenSpace has allowed researchers to image parts of Mars down to a resolution of about 25 centimeters (10 inches) per pixel. That's 24 times sharper than before. [Latest Photos from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter]
NASA and SpaceX have used HiRISE to look at potential landing sites for upcoming robotic missions like the Mars 2020 rover and Red Dragon sample-return mission, because the camera can resolve details in the terrain and determine whether it's safe for a rover to touch down and drive around there. When HiRISE isn't looking at landing sites, scientists use it to study other aspects of the Martian surface.
More:
https://www.space.com/37529-mars-virtual-tour-openspace-data-visualization.html?utm_source=notification