Mars · map
Mars map
A rotatable 3D globe. Explore mission landing sites and the planet’s biggest features — pick any from the list to fly there.
What this map shows
The globe plots 19 real places on Mars: the twelve surface missions whose landing point is known, one site that has been selected but not yet flown, and six landforms large enough to pick out from orbit. Coordinates are planetographic latitude and east longitude — the convention NASA and the USGS use in mission documentation, which is why every longitude here runs 0–360° and none of them is negative.
Two failed landers are deliberately missing. Mars 2 (1971) and Mars Polar Lander (1999) both went silent on arrival and their impact points were never located, so any pin would be a coordinate we made up. Beagle 2 is on the map for the opposite reason: it failed too, but it was actually found — orbital imaging pinned the lander to 11.53°N, 90.43°E in 2015.
Orbiters and flyby probes have no pin either. They never touched a fixed point on the surface, so plotting one would misrepresent what they did — their glyphs appear in the legend and nowhere else. The same rule keeps Mars Sample Return off the map: no landing site has been selected yet.
How to read the pins
A pin’s glyph and colour encode what its mission was built to do — or, for a landform, that nothing was ever built there at all.
- Rover
- A wheeled vehicle that drove away from where it touched down. The pin marks the landing point, not where the rover is now.
- Lander
- A stationary spacecraft. It worked from the exact spot where it came down, so the pin is also its whole working area.
- Planned site
- A landing area that has been selected but not yet flown. It is drawn as a dashed ring so it never reads as hardware already on the ground.
- Orbiter
- A spacecraft that studied Mars from orbit. Legend only — it has no single point on the surface.
- Flyby
- A probe that passed Mars once without entering orbit. Legend only, for the same reason.
- Feature
- A natural landform: a volcano, a canyon system, an impact basin or a polar cap.
Every place on this map
The same nineteen points the globe plots, as a list you can read without WebGL. Landing sites link to the mission dossier.
| Place | Type | Coordinates | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mars Pathfinder | Rover | 19.13°N, 326.79°E | Delivered Sojourner, the first Mars rover (1997). See the mission |
| Spirit | Rover | 14.57°S, 175.48°E | MER-A rover in Gusev Crater (2004). See the mission |
| Opportunity | Rover | 1.95°S, 354.47°E | MER-B rover in Meridiani Planum (2004). See the mission |
| Curiosity | Rover | 4.59°S, 137.44°E | Nuclear-powered rover exploring Gale Crater (2012). See the mission |
| Perseverance | Rover | 18.44°N, 77.45°E | Sample-caching rover in Jezero Crater (2021); carried Ingenuity. See the mission |
| Zhurong | Rover | 25.07°N, 109.93°E | China's first Mars rover, in Utopia Planitia (2021). See the mission |
| Mars 3 | Lander | 45.00°S, 202.00°E | First soft landing on Mars (1971) — about 20 seconds of data. See the mission |
| Viking 1 | Lander | 22.48°N, 312.05°E | First fully successful Mars landing (1976), in Chryse Planitia. See the mission |
| Viking 2 | Lander | 47.97°N, 134.28°E | NASA's second Viking lander (1976), in Utopia Planitia. See the mission |
| Beagle 2 | Lander | 11.53°N, 90.43°E | UK lander that fell silent on arrival (2003); found in orbiter images here in 2015. See the mission |
| Phoenix | Lander | 68.22°N, 234.25°E | Polar lander that confirmed water ice just below the surface (2008). See the mission |
| InSight | Lander | 4.50°N, 135.62°E | Stationary lander that measured marsquakes (2018). See the mission |
| Oxia Planum | Planned site | 18.28°N, 335.37°E | Landing area chosen for ESA's Rosalind Franklin rover — launch targeted no earlier than late 2028, so nothing has landed here yet. See the mission |
| Olympus Mons | Feature | 18.65°N, 226.20°E | The tallest volcano in the solar system — about 22 km high, some two and a half times Everest. |
| Valles Marineris | Feature | 13.90°S, 301.40°E | A canyon system over 4,000 km long and up to 7 km deep. |
| Tharsis Montes | Feature | 0.00°N, 247.00°E | A vast volcanic plateau crowned by three giant shield volcanoes. |
| Hellas Planitia | Feature | 42.40°S, 70.50°E | One of the largest impact basins in the solar system — ~2,300 km across, 7 km deep. |
| North polar cap | Feature | 90.00°N, 0.00°E | A permanent cap of layered water ice and dust. |
| South polar cap | Feature | 90.00°S, 0.00°E | A cap of water ice topped with frozen CO₂ (dry ice). |
Where the data comes from
Landing coordinates come from published mission records; landform positions are the IAU-approved centre of the named feature. Oxia Planum is a special case — the pin uses the IAU centre of the feature, which sits inside the landing region ESA has published for the Rosalind Franklin rover. That mission now has a target: NASA has selected a Falcon Heavy and is aiming to launch no earlier than late 2028, so the site stays drawn as a plan rather than a landing.
The surface texture is a 2048 × 1024 global map, self-hosted rather than loaded from another domain — a cross-origin texture taints the WebGL canvas and the globe renders blank. At that size one pixel covers roughly 10 km at the equator, which is why the map shows regions and landforms rather than hardware.
Common questions
How many places are on this Mars map?
Nineteen: twelve landing sites of missions that reached the surface, one selected-but-not-yet-flown landing area (Oxia Planum), and six major landforms — Olympus Mons, Valles Marineris, Tharsis Montes, Hellas Planitia and the two polar caps.
Why is every longitude on the map positive?
Because we use east longitude, counted 0–360° eastward from the prime meridian, which is the standard in modern Mars mission documentation. Older maps often use west longitude instead, so the same crater can carry two different numbers — 137.44°E and 222.56°W are the same place.
Where exactly did Perseverance land?
In Jezero Crater at about 18.44°N, 77.45°E, in February 2021. The crater holds an ancient river delta, which is why it was chosen: a delta is where sediment — and any preserved traces of past life — would collect.
What is the highest point on Mars?
Olympus Mons, a shield volcano roughly 22 km above the Mars datum — about two and a half times the height of Everest above sea level. Its slopes are so gentle that a visitor standing at the base would not be able to see the summit: the mountain curves away below the horizon.
Can I see the rovers themselves on this map?
No. One pixel of the global texture covers about 10 km at the equator, so a rover is far smaller than the smallest thing the map can resolve. For hardware you need the high-resolution orbital cameras — NASA’s Mars Trek and the HiRISE image archive publish frames where rover tracks are genuinely visible.
Why isn’t every Mars mission on the map?
Because a pin has to mean a real point. Only surface missions with a known touchdown point get one; orbiters and flybys never had a fixed spot, and the two crashed landers whose impact site was never found would need an invented coordinate. Every mission — including those without a pin — is covered in the mission timeline.