JPL
Careers
Education
Science & Technology
JPL Logo
JPL Logo
Mars
.

New Interactive Mosaic Uses NASA Imagery to Show Mars in Vivid Detail

April 5, 2023
Global CTX Mosaic of Mars

The Global CTX Mosaic of Mars allows scientists and the public to explore the planet like never before. It includes different layers of data that can be turned on or off, like these labels for named geographic features on the planet.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s Context Camera, which captured the 110,000 images that make up the interactive global mosaic, is especially useful for spotting impact craters like those seen here.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

The new global mosaic, shown in a detail example at left, is stitched together from images taken by MRO’s Context Camera, which captures the Martian surface in long strips. The process is revealed in the image at right, showing how portions of CTX images were combined.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Both scientists and the public can navigate a new global image of the Red Planet that was made at Caltech using data from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Cliffsides, impact craters, and dust devil tracks are captured in mesmerizing detail in a new mosaic of the Red Planet composed of 110,000 images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Taken by the veteran spacecraft’s black-and-white Context Camera, or CTX, the images cover nearly 270 square feet (25 square meters) of surface per pixel.

That makes the Global CTX Mosaic of Mars the highest-resolution global image of the Red Planet ever created. If it were printed out, this 5.7 trillion pixel (or 5.7 terapixel) mosaic would be large enough to cover the Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena, California.

The product of Caltech’s Bruce Murray Laboratory for Planetary Visualization, the mosaic took six years and tens of thousands of hours to develop. It is so detailed that more than 120 peer-reviewed science papers have already cited a beta version. But the mosaic is also easy enough for anyone to use.

The Global CTX Mosaic of Mars lets anyone with an internet connection browse the Red Planet. The buttons at the bottom let you jump to notable locations, like Gale Crater and Jezero Crater, areas being explored by NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rovers. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

“I wanted something that would be accessible to everyone,” said 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.”

CTX is among three cameras aboard MRO, which is led by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. One of those cameras, the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) provides color images of surface features as small as a dining room table. In contrast, CTX provides a broader view of terrain around those features, helping scientists understand how they’re related. Its ability to capture larger expanses of the landscape has made CTX especially useful for spotting impact craters on the surface. A third camera, the Mars Color Imager (MARCI), led by the same team that operates CTX, produces a daily global map of Mars weather at much lower spatial resolution.

Mars Up Close

Snapping away since MRO arrived at Mars in 2006, CTX has documented nearly all of the Red Planet, making its images an optimal starting point for scientists when they’re creating a map. A bit like hunting for a needle in a haystack and putting together a puzzle at the same time, mapmaking requires downloading and sifting through a large selection of images to find those with the same lighting conditions and clear skies.

To create the new mosaic, Dickson developed an algorithm to match images based on the features they captured. He manually stitched together the remaining 13,000 images that the algorithm couldn’t match. The remaining gaps in the mosaic represent parts of Mars that hadn’t been imaged by CTX by the time Dickson started working on this project, or areas obscured by clouds or dust.

Laura Kerber, a Mars scientist at JPL, provided feedback on the new mosaic as it took shape. “I’ve wanted something like this for a long time,” Kerber said. “It’s both a beautiful product of art and also useful for science.”

Kerber recently used the image to visit her favorite spot on Mars: Medusae Fossae, a dusty region about the size of Mongolia. Scientists are unsure exactly how it formed; Kerber has proposed it might be a pile of ash from a nearby volcano. At the click of a button on the CTX mosaic, she can zoom in and admire ancient river channels, now dry, winding through the landscape there.

Users can also jump to regions like Gale Crater and Jezero Crater – areas being explored by NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rovers – or visit Olympus Mons, the tallest volcano in the solar system, adding topographic data from NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor mission. One of the mosaic’s coolest features highlights impact craters across the entire planet, allowing viewers to see just how scarred Mars is.

“For 17 years, MRO has been revealing Mars to us as no one had seen it before,” said the mission’s project scientist, Rich Zurek of JPL. “This mosaic is a wonderful new way to explore some of the imagery that we’ve collected.”

The mosaic was funded as part of NASA’s Planetary Data Archiving, Restoration and Tools (PDART) program, which helps develop new ways to use existing NASA data. The scientific products of extended missions like MRO are exactly what the program was designed to make more accessible.

More About MRO

JPL manages MRO for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Caltech, in Pasadena, manages JPL for NASA. The University of Arizona, in Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., in Boulder, Colorado. The Context Camera was built by, and is operated by, Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego.

News Media Contact

Andrew Good

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-393-2433

andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov

Karen Fox / Alana Johnson

NASA Headquarters, Washington

301-286-6284 / 202-358-1501

karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov

Robert Perkins

626-395-1862

rperkins@caltech.edu

2023-044

Related News

Mars .

Historic Wind Tunnel Facility Testing NASA’s Mars Ascent Vehicle Rocket

Mars .

Autonomous Systems Help NASA’s Perseverance Do More Science on Mars

Mars .

NASA Releases Independent Review’s Mars Sample Return Report

Mars .

NASA’s Curiosity Reaches Mars Ridge Where Water Left Debris Pileup

Mars .

NASA’s Oxygen-Generating Experiment MOXIE Completes Mars Mission

Mars .

NASA, Partners Study Ancient Life in Australia to Inform Mars Search

Mars .

Watch NASA Engineers Put a Mars Lander’s Legs to the Test

Mars .

Cracks in Ancient Martian Mud Surprise NASA’s Curiosity Rover Team

Mars .

NASA InSight Study Finds Mars Is Spinning Faster

Mars .

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Flies Again After Unscheduled Landing

Explore More

Image .

Curiosity's Path to Gediz Vallis Ridge and Beyond

Image .

Curiosity Views Gediz Vallis Ridge

Image .

Rendering Depicts Curiosity at Gediz Vallis Ridge

Image .

The Sound of MOXIE at Work on Mars

Image .

Perseverance Rover Looks West

Image .

Diverse Minerals in Coprates Chasma

Image .

From Low to High Channels

Image .

Light-Toned Materials along the Floor and Walls of Ius Chasma

Image .

Perseverance Rover Watches Ingenuity Mars Helicopter's 54th Flight

Image .

Setting Guardrails for Mars Lander Testing

About JPL
Who We Are
Executive Council
Directors
Careers
Internships
The JPL Story
JPL Achievements
Documentary Series
Annual Reports
JPL Plan: 2023-2026
Missions
Current
Past
Future
All
News
All
Earth
Solar System
Stars and Galaxies
Subscribe to JPL News
Galleries
Images
Videos
Audio
Podcasts
Apps
Visions of the Future
Slice of History
Robotics at JPL
Events
Lecture Series
Team Competitions
Speakers Bureau
Calendar
Visit
Public Tours
Virtual Tour
Directions and Maps
Topics
JPL Life
Solar System
Mars
Earth
Climate Change
Exoplanets
Stars and Galaxies
Robotics
More
Asteroid Watch
NASA's Eyes Visualizations
Universe - Internal Newsletter
Social Media
Get the Latest from JPL
Follow Us

JPL is a federally funded research and development center managed for NASA by Caltech.

More from JPL
Careers Education Science & Technology Acquisitions JPL Store
Careers
Education
Science & Technology
Acquisitions
JPL Store
Related NASA Sites
Basics of Spaceflight
Climate Kids
Earth / Global Climate Change
Exoplanet Exploration
Mars Exploration
Solar System Exploration
Space Place
NASA's Eyes Visualization Project
Voyager Interstellar Mission
NASA
Caltech
Privacy
Image Policy
FAQ
Feedback
Site Managers: Veronica McGregor, Randal Jackson
Site Editors: Tony Greicius, Naomi Hartono
CL#: 21-0018