Explore the Surface of Mars in 360°

[MUSIC] 

[The American Museum of Natural History logo appears.]

[All around you is a 360 view of the water and land of Cape Canaveral, Florida. Text appears: “Cape Canaveral, USA.”] 

[The Sun starts to set and the scene changes to the night sky. Stars appear in the sky. A red dot appears in the night sky and is highlighted with a circle. Text points to the circle: “Mars, 4th planet from the Sun.”] 

[A box animates onto the night sky to the left of Mars. Text appears: “For millennia, humans have observed Mars as a bright spot in the night sky. Today, let’s go there.”] 

[Our position in the 360 space starts to lift off from the surface of the Earth, as if in a spaceship. We move towards the red dot of Mars, where the orbit of Mars around the Sun has now appeared as a red line.] 

[Another box animates onto the night sky, with text inside: “With current technology, it takes more than 6 months for spacecraft to reach Mars.”] 

[The red dot fades and Mars itself, a red and dusty orb, grows bigger and bigger on screen. It has two objects orbiting around it, and their orbits are indicated by red lines. A new box animates on below Mars, with text: “Mars is half the size of Earth. Its two moons, Phobos and Deimos, are much smaller than our Moon.”] 

[The text box disappears and circles appear around the two objects orbiting Mars. The moon further from Mars, to our left, is labelled “Deimos – 7.5 miles / 12 km across” and the moon closer to Mars passes directly in front of us, labelled “Phobos – 17 miles / 27 km across.”] 

[The orbits of Phobos and Deimos disappear and Mars begins to rotate towards its north side. A text box appears: “Most of the water we’ve detected on Mars is frozen in its polar caps, though there may be more below the surface.”] 

[Mars continues to rotate until we can see a bright white ice cap. A label appears on top of the cap: “Northern Polar Cap.” A text box appears to the right of Mars: “The polar ice caps are made of frozen water covered by frozen carbon dioxide. If all the water ice on Mars melted, it could cover the surface 115 feet (35 meters) deep.”]

[Mars rotates again away from the polar cap, and towards the center of the planet, where there is a large volcano on the surface. A text box covers the surface of Mars: “The surface of Mars in this video is made of images taken by different space missions, not simulations. When we knit all these images together, it creates the patchwork effect you see across the surface of the planet.”] 

[The text box disappears and we can see the surface of Mars covered in high-resolution strips. In the middle is a huge volcano, appearing like a large thick dark ring, with a center pock in the middle. A label appears: “Olympus Mons, shield volcano.”] 

[We continue to fly towards Olympus Mons until we are upon the surface of the planet, flying towards its central crater. The camera reorients away from a birds-eye view, and now we are flying through the crater with the horizon all around us, as if we are really standing and walking through the crater. A text box appears in Mars’ hazy sky with stars visible: “Olympus Mons is about two and half times taller than Mount Everest. It is the largest volcano in the solar system.”] 

[We continue to fly slowly through the caldera of Olympus Mons. Another fact appears in a text box in the sky: “The entire volcano is the size of France and the caldera (volcanic crater) is 50 times the size of Paris. Each of the caldera walls around you is over 1,000 meters tall–more than half a mile high.”] 

[We start to lift off the surface of the planet and back into space, in orbit around Mars. A fact appears in the sky as we lift off: “Olympus Mons is no longer active and is considered a dormant volcano.”]

[Once we get back to a view of the entire planet of Mars, as if from orbit, the camera begins to swing behind Mars and away from the Sun so we get the effect of Mars “eclipsing” the Sun for a moment. A text box appears to the left of Mars: “Like Earth, Mars is tilted on its axis and experiences four seasons, but they are twice as long.”] 

[Once we reach the other side of Mars and the surface is illuminated by the Sun again, a huge crack through the center of the planet is visible. A label points to this feature: “Valles Marineris, rift canyon.”] 

[The camera again begins to dive towards the surface of Mars, towards this canyon. The edges of the canyon walls are clearly visible, with peaks and valleys along the sides. Once we are situated in the center of the canyon, with huge walls on either side, a text box appears in the sky: “Valles Marineris is the largest canyon in the solar system. Its length would almost span the United States from coast to coast, and it’s four times deeper than the Grand Canyon.”] 

[The camera slowly flies through the center of Valles Marineris. A text box appears in the sky: “Unlike the Grand Canyon, Valles Marineris was not carved by a river, but a crack in the stretching crust that was widened by erosion.”] 

[The camera lifts off from the ground of this part of the canyon, and flies low over the canyon walls to another part of Valles Marineris. A fact appears in the sky: “The sky appears red and hazy due to dust suspended in the atmosphere. The atmosphere is almost completely made up of carbon dioxide and is so thin that any heat from the Sun is lost to space quickly.”] 

[The camera settles in another canyon section of Valles Marineris. The ground is very intricately contoured. A text box appears in the sky: “No rovers have ever visited Valles Marineris, but this part of the canyon has been photographed in high resolution by the HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.”] 

[The camera continues to fly down the central valley of this canyon. Another fact appears in the sky: “Look down, and you’ll see the patterns left on the surface by wind and dust.”] 

[The camera continues to fly down this part of the canyon. Another text box appears in the sky: “No future Mars missions are currently scheduled to explore Olympus Mons or Valles Marineris with landers or rovers. The rough terrain of these areas makes landing and exploration risky.”]

[The camera stops and then begins to lift off of the surface. A text box appears to the right: “Mars missions in the coming years plan to investigate the planet’s atmosphere and continue the search for traces of past life. And someday, maybe a crewed mission will venture to Mars to see for themselves what you’re seeing now.”]

[The camera continues to pull away from Mars until we are looking at the planet as if from orbit. Mars begins to spin, and the credits roll on either side of the planet: 

Producer

Lee Bucknell

VR/360 Director

Deion Desir 

Scientific Advisors

Jackie Faherty & Brian Abbott 

Music

“New Frontiers” by Stephen Packe (PRS) / Warner/Chappell Production Music

OpenSpace is funded in part by NASA under award No NNX16AB93A. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

OpenSpace is funded in part by the Knut & Alice Wallenberg Foundation, the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet), and the Swedish e-Science Research Centre. 

© American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY]