NASA unveils detailed 3D map of Mars that lets you zoom in on craters NASA – NASA

excellent Global CTX Mosaic Mars includes 110,000 images taken by the Context Camera (CTX) on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

In a post on its website, NASA describes the mosaic as “the highest resolution global image of the Red Planet ever created.” To emphasize the ad, he adds: “If printed, it would be a mosaic of 5.7 trillion pixels (or 5.7 terapixels) large enough to cover the Rose Bowl in California.”

It took six years and tens of thousands of hours to develop by Caltech’s Bruce Murray lab for planetary visualization. On your first visit to the mosaic, you’ll be shown a view far above the surface of Mars.

At the bottom of the screen, you will find a number of suggestions for places to visit. You might start by choosing Jezero Crater, the ancient dry lake where NASA’s Perseverance rover has been searching for evidence of microbial life for the past two years, and where Ingenuity’s helicopter has made several flights.

After taking a good look around, using the buttons or mouse to zoom in and out, you can get a great idea of ​​the vast distance between Perseverance and NASA’s other operational rover, Curiosity, by selecting the button for the old rover. As you do this, the view will gently rise and seamlessly scan the terrain in a similar way to how Google Earth moves between locations.

If you discover something interesting for yourself and want to come back to it later, you can bookmark the site using one of the buttons on the left side of the screen.

Jay Dixon, an image-processing scientist who led the project and runs Murray’s lab, said of the mosaic: “I wanted something accessible to everyone. Schoolchildren can use it now. My mom, who turned 78, can use it now. The goal is to lower the barriers for people interested in exploring Mars “.