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SOLAR SYSTEM TREKS

• Galleries Feature of the Month Did You Know? Virtual Reality Library Layers of Interest
• Features Virtual Reality 3D Printing 3D Visualization Calculate Distance Calculate Elevation Calculate Sun Angle Trek Map Services
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A Watery Past

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Signs of a Distant Ocean

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The Solar System Treks are online, browser-based portals that allow you to visualize, explore, and analyze the surfaces of other worlds using real data returned from a growing fleet of spacecraft. You can view the worlds through the eyes of many different instruments, pilot real-time 3D flyovers above mountains and into craters, and conduct measurements of surface features. The portals provide exciting capabilities for mission planning, planetary science, and public outreach.

Feature of the Month

Virtual Reality Library

Apollo Landing Sites on the Moon

Possible Future Landing Sites on the Moon

Great Landscapes of Mars

Views of Vesta

Active Geology on Ceres

Great Landforms of Mercury

Trek Galleries

Did you know.

You can use the “Experience TrekVR” tool in many of the Trek portals to create your own virtual reality flyovers of terrain that interests you. We’ve also created a list of pre-made VR flyovers of some of the more popular sites to help get you started in your VR explorations. Use your smart phone to scan the QR code associated with each flyover, put your phone in a pair of cardboard-compatible goggles, and start flying. Keep an eye on this page! We’ll be updating it with new flyovers.

These flyovers use data from the Wide Angle Camera aboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to provide a broad view of the fascinating geography that led to these sites being selected for the first stages of human exploration on the Moon. For each site, we provide a screenshot map from Moon Trek showing the flyover path marked in yellow and a red X marking the landing site. We also include a QR code or browser link for you to use in viewing the flyover.

In January 2018, NASA conducted a workshop to discuss and identify potential future landing sites on the Moon for future missions. For more information see https://lunar-landing.arc.nasa.gov . Here are VR flyovers for some of the highlighted sites. For each site, we provide a screenshot map from Moon Trek showing the flyover path marked in yellow. We also include a QR code or browser link for you to use in viewing the flyover.

From the solar system’s tallest mountain to its deepest canyon, Mars is a world of epic landforms. We explore some of them here. For each site, we provide a screenshot map from Mars Trek showing the flyover path marked in yellow. We also include a QR code or browser link for you to use in viewing the flyover.

Vesta is the second most massive object in the asteroid belt, after the dwarf planet Ceres. It is considered to be a protoplanet, a kind of planet embryo and an example of one of the building blocks for larger planets. Its shape is not at all spherical, after massive impacts by smaller asteroids blasted away much of the southern part of the world. Vesta was studied in detail by NASA’s Dawn robotic spacecraft. For each site, we provide a screenshot map from Vesta Trek showing the flyover path marked in yellow. We also include a QR code or browser link for you to use in viewing the flyover.

Located within the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, the dwarf planet Ceres measures 945 km across. Ceres seems to have a rocky core surrounded by a thick mantle of ice (and perhaps even some liquid water, beneath a crust rich in clay and carbonates. There are many signs of active geology on Ceres. The role of lava on Ceres was played by water, erupted as liquid from below and building mountains of ice. Ceres was studied in detail by NASA’s Dawn robotic spacecraft. For each site, we provide a screenshot map from Vesta Trek showing the flyover path marked in yellow. We also include a QR code or browser link for you to use in viewing the flyover.

Mercury is the smallest and innermost of the major planets in our Solar System. Its close proximity to the Sun results in scorching daytime temperatures of 700 degrees Kelvin. Yet permanently-shadowed craters near the pole contain deposits of ice! In some ways, the surface of Mercury resembles that of our Moon. But Mercury also has many unique and spectacular landforms. Using data from NASA's MESSENGER mission, which studied Mercury from orbit in 2011-2015, we will explore some of these amazing features. For each site, we provide a screenshot map from Vesta Trek showing the flyover path marked in yellow. We also include a QR code or browser link for you to use in viewing the flyover.

Layers of Interest

Feature of the month archive, trek features.

Virtual Reality

3D Printing

3D Visualization

Calculate Distance

Calculate Elevation

Calculate Sun Angle

Trek Map Services

Have Google Cardboard or a set of VR goggles? Open the Tools panel to draw a path to float along with full 360 views, or get started with some of our favorite fly-alongs in our Virtual Reality Library . If you are unfamiliar with QR codes, watch the short video below to see how it works with Trek Virtual Reality. Currently not available in Titan or Icy Moons Trek.

Pick a feature or area that you would like to 3D print, and we'll give you the file! A few of the portals - Bennu , Ceres , Ryugu , and Vesta - have pre-generated 3D print files of the entire globe. Just go to the Menu situated in the top-right corner of the Trek portal and select "Download 3D Globe Print File(s)".

Explore the Moon, Mars, and Vesta in 3D. Spin our moon, the Red Planet or the huge asteroid around its axis, orient it whichever direction you want, and approach from any angle. Change the projection or view by clicking the globe or '3D' button located at the bottom-left of any Trek.

Draw a straight line, a polyline, or freehand your own proposed rover traverse, and we'll give you the distance. It may look tiny on the map, but you'll be amazed how huge (or small) these celestial bodies are. Draw your line, polyline, or freehand polyline and let us do the calculation.

Draw a line, polyline, or freehand polyline and see how the elevation changes. We extract the elevation profile from a digital elevation model (DEM) of the terrain and give you the results in an interactive graph. If you would like to see numbers in a convenient format, simply export the elevation profile to a .csv file.

Note: The GIF shows an older version of our elevation profiler. The current one, which you can access on the respective Trek sites, works in the same way AND has a nifty zoom feature. Try it out and let us know what you think in the Feedback link below.

Select 'Calculate Sun Angle' from the Tool menu then place your marker. Choose the start and end dates and times, set your interval and submit. (The default interval is set to 50 and will display 50 data points interspersed equally between the start and end time. The lower the number, the less accurate the results because the less frequent the readings.) The results are given in a graph showing the Elevation and Azimuth of your placed marker to the sun.

Most of the map layers shown from Treks are available through OGC RESTful Web Map Tile Service (WMTS). Through this service, you can display map layers from Treks on your software system. Read through our documentation at WMTS Layer Services .

Trek Related Links

NASA Science

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Tour the famous 'Pillars of Creation' with gorgeous new 3D views from Hubble and JWST (video)

"With this new visualization, everyone can experience this rich, captivating landscape in a new way."

In 1995, the Hubble Space Telescope released images of the Pillars of Creation — stunning effervescent clouds of interstellar dust and gas, the place where stars are born. 

Now, combining data from Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope , NASA has released a gorgeous 3D visualization of the cosmic structures in both visible and infrared light.

"By flying past and amongst the pillars, viewers experience their three-dimensional structure and see how they look different in the Hubble visible-light view versus the Webb infrared-light view," principal visualization scientist Frank Summers said in a statement . 

"The contrast helps them understand why we have more than one space telescope to observe different aspects of the same object," he continued. 

The Pillars of Creation , which lie about 5,700 light-years from Earth, are composed of cool molecular hydrogen and dust. Due to strong winds and radiation from young nearby hot stars, the pillars are starting to get stripped of their contents. Long, finger-like structures can be seen emerging from the top of the pillars, which are larger than our own solar system .

Inside these structures, hydrogen and dust is gravitationally collapsing into new, infant stars. These new stars will add to the continued dispersion of materials within the pillars. The tallest of the pillars spans 3 light-years from top to bottom — three-quarters of the distance between the sun and our closest star. 

The newly released video is based on observational data gathered for a study authored by Anna McLeod from the University of Durham in England, who also worked as a scientific advisor for the visualization project. 

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— The Eagle Nebula: Facts about the home of the Pillars of Creation

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"When we combine observations from NASA's space telescopes across different wavelengths of light, we broaden our understanding of the universe ," said Mark Clampin, Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

"The Pillars of Creation region continues to offer us new insights that hone our understanding of how stars form. Now, with this new visualization, everyone can experience this rich, captivating landscape in a new way," Clampin added. 

Throughout the visualization, viewers can catch glimpses of stars at different stages of formation. For example, at the top of the central pillar, viewers can see an embedded infant protostar, which is bright red when seen in infrared light. Close to the top of the left pillar is a diagonal jet of material being ejected from a newborn star, though viewers can't see the star itself. And at the end of the left pillars' "fingers," viewers can see a blazing newly formed star. 

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Conor Feehly is a New Zealand-based science writer. He has earned a master's in science communication from the University of Otago, Dunedin. His writing has appeared in Cosmos Magazine, Discover Magazine and ScienceAlert. His writing largely covers topics relating to neuroscience and psychology, although he also enjoys writing about a number of scientific subjects ranging from astrophysics to archaeology.

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