Software giant Microsoft and NASA have been working together to create an interactive Mars tour. The tour took three years of data crunching on 100 computers to create and is able to show Mars in the highest resolution images available of the planet.
The system uses Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope program and uses images collected from 40 years ago till now. The latter of the images come from the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
There are two ways to view the imagery. The first way is to download the Microsoft software and the second is to use the Web client.
The 3-D effect is derived from information provided by an instrument called MOLA, the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter, which flew on the Mars Global Surveyor. Scientists at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., combined the data with regular images to come up with 3-D views. The images themselves reside on the Nebula cloud at NASA-Ames.
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