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Residents of Mars part 2

November 1, 2016

This is part 2 of our list of Mars residents that we started last week. Since last week’s post some new imagery of the Schiaparelli landing site has been released. However, it is not yet available on the HiRISE download site. There is a marker showing that an image was captured of the location with the HiRISE camera, but as of this writing, there is a message saying that the image is currently unavailable.

Mars Pathfinder lander and Sojourner rover
Mars Pathfinder’s rover Sojourner was the first rover on Mars. However, it was relatively small at 65 cm long, 48 cm wide, 30 cm tall and weighing 10.5 kg. It can be seen near the lander in Google Mars imagery:


Yes, that’s as far as it got, in 83 sols (Martian days).


Parachute and backshell.

Viking 1 lander
The Viking 1 lander and its backshell are visible in Google Mars imagery, but we were unable to find its parachute.


Viking 1 lander


Viking 1 backshell

Viking 2 lander
The Viking 2 lander is just visible in Google Mars imagery, but we were able to find a better one which also shows the locations of the backshell and heat shield.


Top left: Backshell. Top right: Heat shield. Bottom: Viking 2 lander.

Mars 3 lander (USSR)
Google Mars does not have high resolution imagery of the Mars 3 lander, but we were able to find a HiRISE image of the parachute.


Mars 3 parachute.

Mars 6 lander (USSR)
There are several images of what is believed to be the Mars 6 lander’s crash site, but as far as we can tell, none of the lander’s components have been identified.

No imagery
It appears no high resolution imagery has been captured for the locations of:
* Mars Polar Lander
* Mars 2 lander (USSR)

To see all the locations above, including some imagery overlays and last week’s locations, download this KML file.

Filed Under: Site News Tagged With: google mars, mars

Finding Curiosity with Mars HiRISE imagery in Google Earth

October 21, 2016

Yesterday we had a look at the track of the Curiosity rover in Google Earth. We noticed that there is some very high resolution imagery of the area. We have previously experimented with getting Mars imagery into Google Earth but did not find any imagery with such high resolution. So we decided to have another look.

It appears that there are multiple orbiters each with multiple imaging systems and each camera is managed by a different organisation. The imagery we looked at previously is from the THEMIS instrument on the orbiter Mars Global Surveyor. It appears that the highest resolution imagery comes form the HiRISE instrument on the same orbiter. We found that it is possible to access the imagery at this website which also allows access to imagery from three other instruments, CTX, MOC and CRISM.

We looked for an image in the location of Curiosity and chose this one. The image is compressed using jp2, similar to Sentinel imagery. We used a tool called Irfanview to convert it to jpg. Since it is quite a large image, we chose to crop it to the location we are interested in. We then placed the image in Google Earth using an image overlay and matched it to the imagery already available.

The image was captured on March 30th, 2016. So, we used Fernando Nogal’s KML track for curiosity that we looked at yesterday to determine where Curiosity was on that date. And sure enough, we can actually see Curiosity!


Curiosity as seen in HiRISE imagery.

This suggests that it may be possible to identify the final resting place of the Schiaparelli lander, which is currently believed to have crash landed, once imagery of its expected landing zone becomes available.

To see the image in Google Earth download this KML file.

Filed Under: Site News Tagged With: curiosity, google mars, mars

The Curiosity rover track

October 20, 2016

With the recent attempted landing on Mars we thought it might be a good time to discuss another Mars inhabitant, NASA’s Curiosity rover.

GEB reader Fernando Nogal let us know about a KML file he maintains which tracks the path of Curiosity on Mars. It can be found in this thread on unmannedspaceflight.com.

Google Mars has a built-in layer showing the locations of various landers and rovers on Mars, including Curiosity and its track. However, the track displayed for Curiosity does not match up with Fernando’s version. A look at the terrain in the imagery shows that Fernando’s version is the more accurate one, as you can clearly see that Curiosity followed certain terrain features to avoid driving over obstacles. This is with the “Rovers and Landers” layer turned on, which includes some HiRISE/CTX imagery. With it turned off, the default Google Mars imagery appears to be out of alignment with both tracks.

We have not been able to identify the source of the Google Mars track, but while trying to find out more about it, we discovered this map which shows yet another version of the track, which is ever further out of alignment.

So what is going on? Our guess is that this is because Mars does not have a GPS system in place and the less accurate tracks are being determined by dead reckoning using Curiosity’s data about the directions and distances it drives whereas Fernando’s track is based on identifying features in the imagery the rover sends back.

If any of our readers knows more about this or where the Google Mars track is sourced from, please let us know in the comments.

Regarding yesterday’s landing attempt, as of this writing it appears that the orbiter managed a successful orbit insertion but the lander’s status is uncertain.

We also came across this interesting article about historical maps of Mars and how our knowledge of the red planet has improved over time. A number of the historical maps can be found in the layer “Mars Gallery->Historic Maps”. It is interesting that older maps had South at the top. Google Earth has a similar layer called “Rumsey Historical Maps” found in the “Gallery” layer that features historical maps of Earth.

Filed Under: Site News Tagged With: curiosity, google mars, mars

Getting HIRISE imagery into Google Mars

May 20, 2016

We came across this interesting article which suggests that Mars may have not only had large seas, but that it may have experienced gigantic Tsunamis, the results of which can be seen to this day. If you want to see what oceans would have looked like on Mars, see this post.

The article mentions the use of THEMIS imagery. The THEMIS instrument is an infrared camera on the Mars Odyssey space craft. Google Mars has a number of Global maps, including ‘Daytime Infrared’ and ‘Nighttime infrared’, which we believe show THEMIS imagery. However, THEMIS has been capturing imagery for 8 years and we thought it might be interesting to see what imagery is available and whether it can easily be put into Google Earth.

A map of all the THEMIS imagery captured can be found here. It is very easy to use. On the left hand side select various parameters such as which year the imagery was captured, whether you want daytime or night time imagery and whether you are interested in visible imagery or infrared imagery (or both). Next, click on the location of interest and on each click, the map zooms in. When you are sure you have located the image you want, click the ‘Select’ button (arrow icon) from the tool bar above the map and click on the map again. It will then display the available images for that location below the map.


Finding THEMIS imagery.

Click one of the images shown and it opens in a new tab in the browser with details about the image and the option to download it in various formats.

We chose to use JPG. Next, create an image overlay in Google Mars using the downloaded image. We had some difficulty aligning the images, especially for long strips. The geographical features can look quite different in different wavelengths. Also, we couldn’t easily use the Google Mars ‘global maps’ as they appear above image overlays. When we finally managed to identify and align the ends of the strip, the middle was out of alignment. This suggests that for best results the image needs to be re-projected, which would require specialised knowledge and software.

To see a couple of images we tested with and location ‘C’ from the article about tsunami’s, download this KML file.

Filed Under: Site News Tagged With: google mars



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