Massive new Mars map is made up of 110,000 images, 5.7 trillion pixels
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The arid surface of Mars is captured in incredible detail in a new mosaic map of the Red Planet.
A team of scientists from Caltech used 110,000 images captured by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) to compile their interactive mosaic.
The map, made up of images from MRO's black-and-white Context Camera (CTX), covers almost 270 square feet (25 square meters) of surface per pixel.
That makes the new map, dubbed the Global CTX Mosaic of Mars, the highest resolution global image of the Red Planet ever created, according to a post from NASA.
Massive Red Planet mosaic built with help of NASA's Mars orbiter
The new Mars map isn't the only time scientists have compiled a massive mosaic of images captured of the Red Planet's surface. NASA's Viking Orbiter missions in the 70s, for example, led to the development, in 2014, of a massive color map called the Viking Orbiter MDIM 2.1.
However, the new Global CTX Mosaic of Mars — pictured above — is by far the most high-resolution map of the Red Planet to date. NASA points out in its post that the new map comprises 5.7 trillion pixels (or 5.7 terapixels). By comparison, the Viking Orbiter MDIM 2.1 is made up of approximately 10 million pixels.
This means that if the new map were printed out in full size, it would be large enough to cover the entire Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena, California. The Rose Bowl Stadium is one of the 20 largest stadiums in the world, with a seating capacity of more than 90,000.
Unsurprisingly, the map took a great deal of time to complete. The Caltech's Bruce Murray Laboratory for Planetary Visualization team said it took tens of thousands of hours to compile over six years.
Though the beta version of the map has already been used in more than 120 peer-reviewed scientific papers, the scientists behind the mosaic aimed to make something easy to use.
"I wanted something that would be accessible to everyone," explained Jay Dickson, the image processing scientist who led the project and manages the Murray Lab. "Schoolchildren can use this now. My mother, who just turned 78, can use this now. The goal is to lower the barriers for people who are interested in exploring Mars."
Mars mosaic is "a beautiful product of art"
The MRO has been capturing images of Mars since 2006. Since then, the CTX instrument aboard the orbiter has covered almost the entirety of the Red Planet, making it ideal for any scientists looking to compile a Mars map.
The scientists behind the Global CTX Mosaic of Mars used an algorithm to help them match images based on features and weather conditions on the Red Planet. However, they also had to stitch together 13,000 images manually that the algorithm couldn't match.
Laura Kerber, a Mars scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who wasn't directly involved in the Mars mosaic project, said, "I've wanted something like this for a long time. It's both a beautiful product of art and also useful for science."
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