FLIGHT simulators on Earth, eat your hearts out. NASA has begun flying spectacular virtual sorties on Mars.
Using pairs of images of the same spots on the ground taken from different vantage points by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, NASA has created 3D landscapes and virtual flyover animations. “This is close to what you’d see hang-gliding over the area,” says Randolph Kirk of the United States Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Arizona, who leads the 3D mapping team.
In one simulation, the team flew around and into the Victoria crater, the landing site of the Mars rover Opportunity. In another, they soared over cratered plains that the Spirit rover spent months trekking across. Craters not visible in ordinary images stand out clearly in 3D, showing features just 20 centimetres high. “When you consider that we’re doing this from 300 kilometres up, [it’s] just astonishing,” Kirk says.
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The Mars rover team has used the flyovers to identify shallow-sloped alcoves leading into Victoria crater that could be ideal entrance points for Opportunity, which is slowly making its way around the crater’s rim.
