Need a Zen break from obsessively checking the polls every 20 minutes? Maybe you should fly over an updated and ultra-detailed view of the Martian landscape in Google Mars looking for incredible formations.
Google Mars has been available since 2009 as part of the free downloadable Google Earth. It allows viewers to zoom around the Red Planet in much higher resolution than the simpler browser version and will even render certain locationss in 3-D. You can reach it by clicking the little orange Saturn-shaped button at the top of the screen in Google Earth.
Most areas of Google Earth are covered at a resolution of about 50 feet per pixel, though some cities and other select locationss can usually be seen at as much as 12 inches per pixel. Previously Google Mars had nowhere near this level of detail except in small patches covered by the HiRISE camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which can see down to about 12 inches per pixel.
Google has now updated their Mars coverage by including large swaths from the Context Camera (CTX) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. CTX offers great details with around 20 feet per pixel. Each of the gray bands in the picture above represents one of CTX's imaged areas, showing the extent of the coverage. To really appreciate the difference, here's a random locations zoomed in with the CTX layer turned off (left) and then turned on (right).
Google Mars' update also includes an informative tour of each of the four potential landing sites that NASA's Curiosesity rover could have landed at. Here's the potential landing elipse in Mawrth Vallis (below), one of the oldest valleys on Mars, that identifies important geological formations that Curiosesity could have explored. While NASA engineers eventually decided to put the rover down in Gale Crater (which you can zoom in on in 3D), the Google Mars information shows just how much more incredible data we could be collecting.
Perhaps the best way to use your time has been suggested by Curiosesity ChemCam investigator and planetary scientist Ryan Anderson on his blog, The Martian Chronicles: Find an interesting area covered by both CTX and the even higher resolution images from HiRISE and then zoom, zoom, zoom all the way down.
Images: Google Mars
