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SIWOMSPACE

Terrain Lab · Available

Jezero Crater, analysed in your browser.

Real elevation data for western Jezero — Perseverance's field site — with slope, hazards and routes computed live on your device. Nothing here is simulated.

Preparing the Terrain Lab…

Keyboard: use the toolbar buttons, the route presets, or “Enter coordinates instead” to place points. In 3D, drag to rotate, scroll or pinch to zoom, right-drag (or two fingers) to pan.

How this view was generated

Method

Every step from the archive product to the pixels on screen, so the result can be checked or reproduced.

Full data catalogue

Source

Product
CTX digital terrain model (Mars 2020 TRN)
Producer
USGS Astrogeology Science Center for NASA/JPL Mars 2020
Licence
CC0 1.0 (USGS data release)
Citation
Fergason, R. L., Galuszka, D. M., Hare, T. M., Mayer, D. P., Redding, B. L. (2020). Mars 2020 Terrain Relative Navigation CTX DTM Mosaic. USGS Astrogeology. doi:10.5066/P906QQT8 (opens in a new tab)
Extent
18.212–18.721° N, 77.160–77.699° E · 319 × 302 posts
Elevation range
-2,710.1 to -1,517 m (MOLA areoid)

Processing

  1. 01Read the MOMAR Jezero DEM: USGS Mars 2020 TRN CTX DTM resampled to a 1596×1512 geographic grid of 20 m posts (equirectangular, planetocentric, east longitude, Mars sphere R = 3396190 m).
  2. 02Area-averaged 5×5 blocks to 319×302 posts of about 100 m (north–south 100 m; east–west 94.9 m at the centre latitude).
  3. 03Quantized to int16 at 0.1 m steps (offset -2114 m). Every block had valid samples; there are no gaps.
  4. 04Slope, hazard mask and routes are computed in the visitor's browser from this grid (see Data & Methodology).

Analysis in the browser

  • Slope. Horn's (1981) 3 × 3 finite difference. The east–west cell size of each row is R·cos φ·Δλ (94.7–95.0 m here), the north–south size 100 m.
  • Hazard mask. Cells above the slope limit are impassable; cells within 5° of it are flagged. Both are hatched as well as coloured.
  • Routes. 8-connected A* without corner cutting. Shortest: minimizes surface (3-D) distance. Lower-slope: each step costs its surface distance × (1 + 3 × (slope ÷ limit)²). A point placed on ground steeper than the limit is moved to the nearest cell under it, and the panel says how far.
  • Presets. Start and goal positions are recorded Perseverance stop locations (NASA/JPL localization, via the MOMAR pipeline). The routes between them are ours, not the rover's.

Limitations

  • 100 m posts average out boulders, scarps, ripples and every feature smaller than a few hundred metres. Slopes are measured over a ~200 m baseline and underestimate local steepness.
  • Heights are relative to the MOLA areoid and carry the vertical uncertainty of the source DTM.
  • Slope is the only terrain constraint used for routes. It is not a safety model.