Google Mars is now officially live. Using this service, you can browse for martians on the landscape, er the martian landscape I mean, pretty much the same way as using Google Maps. Google has included three different types of data in Google Mars.
* Elevation - A shaded relief map, generated with data from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) on NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. This map is color-coded by altitude, so you can use the color key at the lower left to estimate elevations.
* Visible - A mosaic of images taken by the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) on NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. MOC is like the digital camera you have at home. Basically, this is what your eyes would see if you were in orbit around Mars.
* Infrared - A mosaic of infrared images taken by the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) on NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft. Warmer areas appear brighter, and colder areas are darker. Clouds and dust in the atmosphere are transparent in the infrared, making this the sharpest global map of Mars that’s ever been made.
Users can access the images from the Themis camera onboard the Mars Odyssey spacecraft, as well as older images from up to a century ago. You can explore the surface, watch for orbiters, and wonder exactly where the little green men are hiding. Go check it out at Google Mars.
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