Mars, the fourth planet from the Sun and recognizable for its red color from Earth. Because of this color, it was often associated with the aspects of war and bloodshed. In the 19th century, telescopes had become advanced enough to observe any detail on Mars. It was noted that Mars had peculiar surface markings that seemed to move. To some astronomers of back then, these resembled canals. Every time Mars approached opposition, it changed appearance. This sparked wild speculation of a civilization building canals to irrigate their dry planet with water from the notably bright polar caps. For the next several decades up to the 60's, there was a renaissance of scifi of the red planet. Whether it be invading Martians like HG Wells, War of the Worlds, or archaic civilizations like John Carter of Mars. By the early 60's there was growing evidence Mars was potentially less habitable than the desert planet many envisioned including signs of a thinner atmosphere and markings being explained by rock formations and dust storms spanning the planet.
In the 60's and with the moon coming within reach by humans, Mars was to become the next interest in space exploration and of fiction. In 1965, NASA's Mariner 4 became the first spacecraft to flyby the planet. It found no single trace of an advanced civilization, an atmosphere thinner than that of Mount Everest, and craters galore like the moon. Mariner 6 and 7 would do nothing but solidify this image. The image of Mars as a planet with aliens was gone by the 70's. It was from here on, Mars fiction would mostly be of exploring Mars. The face of Mars as we knew it would be forever changed again when Mariner 9, designed as an orbiter, discovered a planet with far more than just craters. It found mountains, volcanoes to be exact, so large they resembled massive pimples on the planet. Nearby was a canyon of proportions so large, it could stretch across the entirety of the Continental US, the Sahara desert, or China. Also of note were riverbeds rivaling the Amazon river in size and several impact basins rivaling the Mare Imbrium. Mars was a world of geological wonders.
In 1976, the Viking probes became the first probes to return images of any detail from the surface of another planet. With them were experiments to detect microbial life in the soil and detect earthquakes. The Viking probes however found no life and a planet dead of geologic activity. For 20 years, Mars would be left abandoned of any further exploration attempts. Then, in the mid 90's after a spate of spacecraft failures, a rock found in Antarctica and thought to come from Mars was theorized to have fossils of life forms. It was after this, Mars exploration went into overdrive. Mars resurged as a destination in fiction and for every 2 spacecraft NASA sent past lunar orbit, one went to Mars.
Over two decades later, these spacecraft have given Mars one of the biggest comeback stories in interesting finds. The Mars Exploration Rovers found evidence of seas of water that once existed, InSight discovered Mars is still a geologically active world with ongoing earthquakes and possible volcanic activity. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has discovered a large portion of Martian water appears to have went underground rather than get stripped away by the solar wind. The next steps of Mars exploration have been sample return followed by a manned mission popularized in films like Mission to Mars, Red Planet, and especially, The Martian. Hopefully this will eventually lead to colonization, and eventually... Terraforming.
This overlay set is the FIRST 64K color texture of Mars for Celestia. There is also a 16K cloud texture made from real cloud data. The normal map is partially from more recent and higher resolution Mars Express data. To read about the journey of making these textures, check out this topic here: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=24018
DOWNLOAD GRAND TOUR MARS HERE!!!
Over 3 gigabytes, contains 64K base and normal, 16K clouds and normal, 16K dust and normal, 1K night, and 4K extra pre Mariner 9 texture showcasing how the planet has changed overtime.
The addon also updates IAU nomenclature and adds unofficial names for landing site target areas like Spirit's Home Plate and Opportunity's Marathon Valley. Every located piece of landing material has also been catalogued from the landers of Viking to the ballast impact sites of Curiosity.
An extra download below includes many and I mean, MANY additional textures. Shown is a texture for the slope variability on Mars.
DOWNLOAD ADDITIONAL TEXTURES FOR MARS HERE!!!
Almost 10 gigabytes, download base first.
Grand Tour Mars
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Topic authorShadow-Dragon-777
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- With us: 2 years 10 months
- Location: A Galaxy Far Far Away....
Grand Tour Mars
Last edited by Shadow-Dragon-777 on 05.07.2024, 03:11, edited 11 times in total.
- John Van Vliet
- Posts: 2941
- Joined: 28.08.2002
- With us: 22 years
not quite the first but then again i only had the data up for about 2 weeks last year
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=22051
it took up a lot of space in my Google-drive
and i did NOT edit the seam in the south
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=22051
it took up a lot of space in my Google-drive
and i did NOT edit the seam in the south
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Topic authorShadow-Dragon-777
- Posts: 78
- Joined: 03.11.2021
- Age: 30
- With us: 2 years 10 months
- Location: A Galaxy Far Far Away....
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Topic authorShadow-Dragon-777
- Posts: 78
- Joined: 03.11.2021
- Age: 30
- With us: 2 years 10 months
- Location: A Galaxy Far Far Away....
FULL ADDON HAS BEEN RELEASED!!! Added level 5-12 detail for landers. Added 43 extra overlays. Added night map. Added Pre Mariner 9 dust storm Mars texture to base download which displays all we knew of Mars from Mariner 4,6,7 and ground observations. Fixed texture issue around Opportunity. Added faint night map for the aurora which are theorized to be at the very limit for human visibility.
Redownload everything if you want the best performance.
Redownload everything if you want the best performance.
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Topic authorShadow-Dragon-777
- Posts: 78
- Joined: 03.11.2021
- Age: 30
- With us: 2 years 10 months
- Location: A Galaxy Far Far Away....
16K dust has been added. The planet will be found completely covered in a global dust storm if time is changed to dates like early June 2018 or October 1971. Otherwise it will have a few regional dust storms by default. This makes the planet change and come alive when viewing addons for missions like Mariner 9, Viking, or Opportunity which observed major dust storms on the planet.
Also updated placenames and painstakingly added unofficial placenames for areas near rovers and landing sites.
Also updated placenames and painstakingly added unofficial placenames for areas near rovers and landing sites.