Lost on Mars? -- Google Offers Maps Of Mars

[lurkey]

Google Offers Maps Of Mars

POSTED: 10:18 am EST March 14, 2006
UPDATED: 10:21 am EST March 14, 2006

Google has done a pretty darn good job of covering the Earth.

Now, the company is expanding its electronic tentacles to Mars.

It has launched Google Mars, a Web browser-based mapping tool that gives users an up-close, interactive view of the Red Planet.

The Martian maps were developed from images that were taken by NASA's orbiting Mars Odyssey and Mars Global Surveyor satellites.

Unlike the maps of Earth, you can't use Google Mars to spit out a set of driving directions. But you can see a map color-coded by altitude, one that shows Mars' surface in black and white and an infrared map that indicates the range of temperature on the planet.

A search function also allows users to find prominent sites such as Mons Olympus -- the largest mountain in the solar system -- or the sites where landers from Earth touched down.

Google also offers satellite maps of the moon.