Google Earth provides dizzying 3D views of Mars

Mars enthusiasts can fly from the towering peak of Olympus Mons to Mars Pathfinder's peaceful resting place in an add-on to the latest version of the desktop application Google Earth, which was released on Monday.

The new Mars map amasses some 1000 gigabytes of data from a range of Mars probes, including NASA's Viking orbiters, Europe's Mars Express orbiter, and six landers, such as NASA's twin rovers, to create a three-dimensional view of the planet at a wide range of scales.

"What we've done is bring all that information into one single, easy-to-use platform," says Matthew Hancher of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. "Everything that's ever gone to Mars has been put together to give us this unified view of the planet."

The new tool is accessible enough to appeal to a wide audience, but Hancher hopes the tool will also help researchers by allowing them to determine what data is available - such as infrared images and mineral maps made by orbital spectrometers - for particular regions of interest.
Interactive software

The software is intended to be interactive, allowing users to draw lines, add text, embed videos, and add images. Researchers may also add new contentMovie Camera, which must be encoded in a language called KML in order to be properly overlaid on the globe.

So far adding new data to the Mars layer is not automated, and only a few hundred images from the HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter - the most powerful camera ever sent to another planet - have been added, Hancher says.

The new software is an outgrowth of Google Mars, an online tool that allows users to view two-dimensional maps of the Red PlanetMovie Camera, pieced together from images taken by Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey.

Read more about how to use the new Mars features in the Google Earth Blog.

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