If you’ve ever wished to make a journey to Mars and go on a hike with the Perseverance rover, now’s your probability. Researchers have created an interactive map of Mars’s Jezero Crater, letting you just about wander across the planet’s floor and observe the rover’s path.

The interactive map reveals knowledge like topography, contour strains, and the rover’s path and present place throughout the crater. There are additionally panoramic views marked so you’ll be able to zoom in and recognize 360-degree views of the vistas of Mars.

The map was offered at the Europlanet Science Congress 2022 by Sebastian Walter of the Freie Universität Berlin.

“The map is the perfect tool for planning a future visit to Mars, with an interactive interface where you can choose from different available base datasets,” Walter stated in a press release. “Some of the slopes are pretty steep, so watch out for those if you want to avoid too much oxygen consumption! To get a real feeling of what to expect on your future Mars trip, you can click on one of the waypoint marker symbols to enter either a fullscreen 3D view or, if you have a Virtual Reality setup, to enter a fully immersive environment. You can even listen to the sounds of the rover if you stand close by.”

The knowledge for the map is a mixture of information recorded by Perseverance, like the photographs from its Mastcam-Z digital camera and the sounds from its SuperCam instrument, and knowledge taken from orbiters which kinds the bottom layer of the map. This orbital knowledge got here from the European Space Agency’s Mars Express and NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, each of that are used to seize high-resolution photos of the floor.

The map was initially designed for skilled scientists, in accordance with Walter, however as they added extra knowledge the analysis staff realized it will be enjoyable for the general public to entry as properly.

“Initially we created the Jezero map as an outreach application to complement the HRSC Mapserver tool, which supports professional scientists to explore the Martian surface,” stated Walter. “But as the rover returns more and more high-resolution image data and even audio recordings, it turns out to be the perfect tool for immersive visualization of that data in a scientific context by itself.”

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