Driving directions for Mars. Pick a start and a destination, by name or by tapping the globe, and you get two routes: a terrain-safe corridor that skirts craters, canyons and steep scarps, and the straight great-circle track for comparison. Each comes with an elevation profile, turn-by-turn steps, and travel time for a robotic rover, a pressurized crew rover, a bike or a walk in a suit.

How honest is it

The elevations are the real Mars: the MOLA MEGDR global topography grid from Mars Global Surveyor (NASA PDS, 16 pixels per degree), resampled here to 2048 × 1024 cells, about 10 km per cell at the equator with 1 m vertical precision. The elevation profile, the climb totals, the hover readouts and the shaded relief all read from that one grid. Slopes are regional grades across one cell, not what a wheel feels; small crater walls are steeper than they look here. Climb totals add up the elevation change between route samples roughly 20 km apart, so they are a floor: sample finer and Mars gives you more hills. Until the 2 MB grid has arrived (or when you are offline) a fitted model with named features at their published elevations stands in. Crater and canyon avoidance uses a hand-kept list of the large hazards, so small craters are in the terrain but not on the avoid list. Distances and bearings are real spherical geometry on a 3,389.5 km Mars. Travel times use the listed speeds and active hours per sol. Good for the feel of a traverse; do not plan a mission with it.

Imagery and data

• Topography: MGS MOLA MEGDR, 16 pixels per degree (MGS-M-MOLA-5-MEGDR-L3-V1.0, Smith et al. 2003), NASA PDS Geosciences Node. US Government work, public domain.
• Global colour mosaic: Viking MDIM 2.1, NASA/JPL/USGS, via NASA Mars Trek.
• Surface texture: Solar System Scope 2K Mars (CC BY 4.0), blended and shaded here.
• Place photos: NASA/JPL-Caltech (Jezero, Gale), NASA/USGS (Valles Marineris), NASA/JPL/USGS (Hellas), ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (Olympus Mons, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO; Korolev, CC BY-SA 3.0).
• Names, coordinates and elevations: IAU/USGS Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature and published mission data.

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