- Valles Marineris in the evening with Phobos and Deimos below the sun.
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.
- Opportunity lander inside its crater.
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.
- Clouds on 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.
- Grand Tour Mars
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, 0.5 night, and 4K extra pre Mariner 9 texture showcasing how the planet has changed overtime.
An extra download below includes many and I mean, MANY additional textures. Shown is a texture for the slope variability on Mars.
- List of textures
DOWNLOAD ADDITIONAL TEXTURES FOR MARS HERE!!!
Almost 10 gigabytes, download base first.
