About the project
This site was built by Helvetic Dynamics for the NASA Space Apps Challenge. It answers one practical question: when you need to test a rover, train astronauts or study a landing area, where on Earth can you find terrain that resembles the Moon or Mars?
Our main resource is ESA's The Catalogue of Planetary Analogues, produced in the CAFE study (Concepts for Activities in the Field for Exploration) by The Open University for ESA, final version December 2012. It describes 30 field sites on Earth: where they are, their climate and geology, and which lunar or Martian features each one imitates. We add NASA data: LRO laser altimetry and camera maps for the Moon, Mars Global Surveyor laser altimetry and the Viking colour mosaic for Mars. Site photographs come from Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.
Quick start
- On the home page press Earth, Moon or Mars, or press Map in the top bar to jump to the three map cards.
- On the Earth map, switch between Moon and Mars, tick the criteria that matter to you and watch the map change colour.
- Hover a blinking point for a quick card, click it to zoom in, then press Open the full sheet for the photos and the catalogue data.
- On the 3D Moon or Mars, rotate the globe, click anywhere on the surface and read which Earth site resembles that spot most.
Using the Earth map
- Moon / Mars switch (top right): changes the list of sites (22 for the Moon, 29 for Mars) and the colour (blue or red).
- Criteria panel (right): eight categories. Click a category to open its sub-categories and tick what you want. Terrain & geology is fully ticked at the start: it is the catalogue's own list of lunar or Martian features each site imitates. The other seven (climate type, temperature, precipitation, humidity, wind, insolation, altitude) start empty; tick bands to include them. All / None buttons speed this up.
- Colours: a country that contains a catalogued site is tinted, and a glowing disk surrounds each precise point. The stronger the colour, the better the site covers your ticked criteria, relative to the best site.
- Points blink. Hover for a card with the percentage, the climate values and the features. Click to zoom in and pin the card. Open the full sheet opens the site page.
- Ranking lists the 8 best sites; click one to zoom to it. The Point radius slider only changes the size of the glowing disks.
- Countries only: 14 sites have no coordinates in the catalogue, so only their country is coloured.
- Zoom with the wheel, pinch or the + / − buttons; ⟲ returns to the world view.
The site sheet
It shows a photo of the Earth site next to a Moon or Mars image proposed as its counterpart, the catalogue data (climate, altitude, sub-sites), the lunar and Martian features it covers, and how it scores with your current criteria. The Moon / Mars switch changes the comparison image. Press Esc or ← Back to return.
Using the 3D Moon and Mars
- Drag to rotate, wheel or pinch to zoom, click a point to analyse it. The Relief slider exaggerates the vertical scale; Near side / Far side reset the view.
- Selected point: latitude and longitude, altitude, slope, local relief and brightness, then a terrain profile (for example “highlands + rugged relief”) and the catalogue elements that profile calls for.
- Closest Earth site: the catalogue site that covers most of those elements, with its percentage, a photo, a mini-map and a button to open its sheet.
- Glowing zones: areas of the globe whose terrain matches a catalogue site above the chosen Threshold. The colour is the matching site, listed in the legend with the share of the surface it covers. Lower the threshold to light up more zones.
- The Moon / Mars switch in the header swaps the globe without leaving the page.
Reading the percentages
A percentage is the share of the criteria you ticked that the catalogue lists for that site. It is a coverage score, not a measure of physical similarity.
On the Earth map, each category with at least one tick counts equally. For terrain it is the share of ticked items the site covers; for the other categories it is 1 if a value quoted in the catalogue falls inside a ticked band, 0 otherwise. On the 3D globes the profile of the clicked point gives the list of elements to cover, and the site covering the largest share wins. On a tie, the driest site comes first (and, for Mars, then the coldest), using the values quoted in the catalogue.
Limits to keep in mind
- The catalogue is a 2012 literature compilation and some entries are incomplete. 14 of the 30 sites have no usable coordinates, and one set of coordinates (Yellowstone) is printed wrongly in the document, so it is not used.
- The catalogue gives no reference values for the Moon or Mars and does not measure UV. The climate bands (for example “very cold: below −10 °C”) are thresholds defined for this project from the values the catalogue quotes. “Insolation” uses the radiation or sunshine hours it quotes.
- The rules linking lunar or Martian terrain to catalogue elements were defined for this project, not by ESA or NASA. They are listed in the “How the site is chosen” panel of each globe.
- The elevation grids are coarse (about 7.6 km per pixel on the Moon, 14.8 km on Mars), so small craters and canyons are not resolved. NASA describes its Moon Kit maps as optimised for aesthetics, not science.
- Site photos are the lead image of each Wikipedia page; some are maps or satellite views. The Moon and Mars images are proposed associations, not official equivalences.
- This is an independent project. It is not an official NASA or ESA product.
Sources and credits
- ESA — Cataloguing otherworldly landscapes on Earth (The Catalogue of Planetary Analogues, CAFE study, The Open University, 2012).
- NASA/GSFC Scientific Visualization Studio — CGI Moon Kit (LRO LOLA elevation and LROC colour map; visualizer Ernie Wright, scientist Noah Petro).
- NASA Planetary Data System — MGS MOLA gridded topography (4 pixels per degree).
- NASA/JPL/USGS — Viking MDIM 2.1 colour mosaic, via Wikimedia Commons.
- Site photographs and map outlines: Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons contributors; country outlines from Natural Earth via the world-atlas package.
- Built for the NASA Space Apps Challenge by Helvetic Dynamics.
Photo and image credits
The photos and the Moon and Mars images are the lead images of the Wikipedia pages below (or the named Wikimedia Commons file). Each file's author and licence are shown on its Wikimedia page; many are Creative Commons licences that require attribution. Check them before reusing an image.
Earth site photos
- McMurdo Dry Valleys (used for: Antarctic Dry Valleys)
- Atacama Desert (used for: Atacama Desert)
- Simpson Desert (used for: Central Australia)
- Axel Heiberg Island (used for: Axel Heiberg Island)
- Barberton Greenstone Belt (used for: Barberton Greenstone Belt)
- Black Point Lava Flow, Arizona (used for: Black Point Lava Flow)
- Sunset Crater (used for: Cinder Lake, Sunset Crater)
- Columbia River Basalt Group (used for: Columbia River Basalt Group)
- Haughton impact crater (used for: Haughton Impact Structure)
- Erg Chebbi (used for: Ibn Battuta)
- Askja (used for: Iceland)
- Tolbachik (used for: Kamchatka)
- Kīlauea (used for: Kilauea)
- Lonar Lake (used for: Lonar Crater)
- Meteor Crater - Arizona (used for: Meteor Crater)
- Mistastin crater (used for: Mistastin Lake Crater)
- Mount Etna (used for: Mt. Etna)
- Namib (used for: Namib Desert)
- Pavilion Lake (used for: Pavilion Lake)
- Marble Bar, Western Australia (used for: Pilbara)
- Nördlinger Ries (used for: Ries Impact Crater)
- Río Tinto (used for: Rio Tinto)
- Sudbury Basin (used for: Sudbury Impact Crater)
- Svalbard (used for: Svalbard)
- Teide National Park (used for: Tenerife)
- Flaming Mountains (used for: Turpan Desert)
- Mars Desert Research Station (used for: Utah Desert)
- Grand Prismatic Spring (used for: Yellowstone)