
Mars, Moon on Google Maps - vinchuco
https://www.google.com/maps/space/mars/@7.189878,-40.5235811,9528848m/data=!3m1!1e3
======
Wei-1
Google puts one of their offices on Mars.

[https://www.google.com/maps/space/mars/@-4.5632909,137.39354...](https://www.google.com/maps/space/mars/@-4.5632909,137.3935404,2521m/data=!3m1!1e3)

[https://www.google.com/maps/space/mars/@-4.5642766,137.39039...](https://www.google.com/maps/space/mars/@-4.5642766,137.390396,3a,60y,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1soPQic3l4rHQAAAQ3uBGOBw!2e0!7i5376!8i2688)

~~~
rahkiin
I don't really see how this is funny or nice. There is no office on mars. And
this is what brings fake information into the world.

Just show Mars as it is.

~~~
pen2l
You bring up a good point, this is actually really bad. It's bad because the
kind of position Google is in, because of its brand power, because of its
authority in the modern world. They cannot joke around like this at this
point. They need to take this down.

> And this is what brings fake information into the world.

Others are saying "you don't have a sense of humor" \-- wrong response. I
remember when I was younger my older brother explaining to me and my dad how
Google works... by some pigeons sitting in a large building behind keywords
because they're quick and have great vision. Yeah he bought the prank. I'm
surprised he believed it, because he was pretty bright (did math + EE double
major in 2 and a half years, now a manager at a large successful tech
company). But this happens, all of us have blind spots, jokes like these hit
us in bad ways. Even really smart folks can be had. This is like the stupidest
and most contemptible kind of humor really.

~~~
matthewmacleod
And the world you paint, where excessive care must be taken to avoid even the
slightest possibility of confusion, is deeply dull and boring. It's the same
attitude that's led to such widespread bland corporatism.

You should be skeptical of everything Google tells you, like every other
organisation. If anything, this should be a pointed reminder of that fact.

~~~
pen2l
> You should be skeptical of everything Google tells you, like every other
> organisation. If anything, this should be a pointed reminder of that fact.

Okay so you're driving to your parent's house and open up Google Maps for
directions, are you going to start doubting its directions?

There is a difference between a joke being made by a person or a small company
vs. implanting fake information in a source (Google Maps) which is taken prima
facie by almost everyone in this day and age to be true and accurate.

Since you're on this site, I will assume for now (for sake of explaining my
point) that you have a lot of knowledge on tech related stuff but perhaps have
a blind spot in your medical knowledge. Suppose you have some illness and you
go to research it at a popular and well-reputed site which claims to have
information about medical illnesses. The site in the middle of nowhere has a
joke about some random fact about the human body that someone without a
medical science background could easily spot but you couldn't. You see now how
this could suddenly fuck up your understanding of things and propagate down in
your knowledgebase to then start affecting your decision framework? I'm tired
and my example is a little far-fetched but I think you get the point I'm
trying to make. Google can joke around come april time, but this kind of bull
shit in "google maps" is not acceptable. My niece could easily take from this
that human beings have the technology to pull off something like this in the
way google is showing and make wild and inaccurate extrapolations that will
confuse her.

~~~
DanBC
> Okay so you're driving to your parent's house and open up Google Maps for
> directions, are you going to start doubting its directions?

If it tells you to drive into a lake, yes, you should doubt it.

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/woman-
follo...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/woman-following-
sat-nav-canada-drives-straight-into-lake-huron-ontario-a7029131.html)

~~~
wolfgang42
That article seems to be very carefully worded to _imply_ that the navigation
system was involved in the accident, without coming out and saying so.

 _> A woman following her car's sat nav on a foggy night _took a wrong turn
_and ended up driving into a lake. [...] she lost her way and drove down a
steep boat launch into Lake Huron. [...] Local police said the way the
harbour’s boat launch is built means a wrong turn taken on a rainy night would
come as a shock._

That is to say, when she drove into the lake it seems to have been because she
_wasn 't_ following the directions, and this, combined with the fog and a
confusing design for the boat launch, caused her to not realize that she
wasn't on a regular road (albeit the wrong one) until it disappeared out from
under her.

The article then concludes with some statistics about GPS causing distracted
driving, without either connecting them back to the news item at hand or
comparing them to distracted driving caused by non-electronic navigation.

------
jpatokal
These have been around since 2009. Still neat though!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Moon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Moon)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Mars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Mars)

~~~
saagarjha
Yep, I remember them being part of Google Earth. IIRC they had one of the
night sky as well.

~~~
helb
They still have [https://www.google.com/sky/](https://www.google.com/sky/)

------
rathish_g
Open it, spent some time on Mars and Moon, then come back to Earth view and
enjoy the blue planet... How gorgeous our Mother Earth is!

------
NoGravitas
Street view on Mars, with rover:
[https://www.google.com/maps/space/mars/@19.098134,-33.250752...](https://www.google.com/maps/space/mars/@19.098134,-33.250752,3a,75y,78.75h,63.33t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s4P8_06sQinAAAAQ3sfdQ1w!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo0.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3D4P8_06sQinAAAAQ3sfdQ1w%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D175.5%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i14000!8i7000)

------
pgreenwood
Check out the Apollo 11 landing site:

[https://www.google.com/maps/space/moon/@0.6813909,23.4602739...](https://www.google.com/maps/space/moon/@0.6813909,23.4602739,308m/data=!3m1!1e3)

~~~
amarant
Your link dropped me off in a rainforest in the Kongo.. Are you sure that's
where Apollo landed? I was kinda hoping for some crater on the moon....

~~~
a3n
The Kongo is where the _real_ fake studio was. The conspiracy theory of the
moon landings being faked in a studio at Area 51 was just cover for the real
conspiracy.

Information wants to be free.

------
aplaice
The images are of quite a high resolution — they're even better than what you
can get with celestia [0] and the (amazing) best surface and normal maps (by
John van Vliet) [1]. Compare [2] and [3].

Celestia still has advantages — nicer zoomed out view (due to lack of
"striping"), better navigation, arbitrary point of view, offline access.
(Also, the lack of sufficiently detailed planetary maps adapted for Celestia
isn't technically a flaw of the program itself.)

[0] [https://celestiaproject.net/](https://celestiaproject.net/)

[1]
[http://celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/mars.php](http://celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/mars.php)

[2] [https://i.imgur.com/0R70L1r.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/0R70L1r.jpg)

[3] [https://i.imgur.com/VUPhwIw.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/VUPhwIw.jpg)

------
danielfaust
Nice landslide on Mars
[https://www.google.com/maps/space/mars/@3.8915157,-44.053898...](https://www.google.com/maps/space/mars/@3.8915157,-44.0538984,81292a,35y,34.65t/data=!3m1!1e3)

~~~
overlordalex
That landslide looks like it's about 10km across. That's absolutely
incredible!

On that note, the scale bar in the bottom is almost impossible to use - it's
not in a place where I can easily compare what I'm looking at to what the bar
represents - mainly due to the placement of the controls. Having it on the
left of that grouping would be much more useful

~~~
mholmes680
i've always wanted them to float that scale bar, so i can drag and rotate it.

------
zokier
Few months back I was looking for a map/poster of Mars and was quite surprised
that there weren't that many good options. Almost all of the available full
coverage images/maps were based on the ancient Viking data. Investigating bit
deeper, apparently the modern high-resolution instruments have imaged only
small portion of the surface, so there isn't a simple way to create complete
map from those. Additionally, stiching the captured images apparently is
highly non-trivial because the images have been taken over such long periods
and from different angles etc. Different instruments have also different
spectral responses, rarely being exactly plain normal rgb.

If some image processing wizard would want to make a stab at merging all the
different image sources, I think the results could be quite spectacular. The
data is mostly there and publicly available, it just needs massive amounts of
processing.

------
tomw1808
I'm missing Google Street View on those.

~~~
gumby
What are you talking about? They have 100% coverage for all streets on both
planets.

Canals, on the other hand...

~~~
dredmorbius
Technically correct.

~~~
andrewwharton
Although I think you'll end up with a divide by 0 error. :)

/pedantry

------
eridal
To make this work on Firefox mobile, first activate desktop mode, and then
click on any link.

Can't really understand why a perfectly capable device is access denied
without such trick, it clearly works.

~~~
kuschku
Google does this with several of their sites, intentionally making them worse
on Firefox (Desktop or Mobile). Firefox Mobile actually already fakes a Chrome
Mobile UA in some situations to get around that.

Examples include the Google Search, Google Maps, or YouTube.

I simply configured via about:config the above mentioned UA faker for Google’s
sites to fake Chrome’s UA.

~~~
Piskvorrr
We're in for a sequel of "Only works in MSIE." Brace yourselves.

~~~
kuschku
Just take a look at Signal Desktop, WhatsApp Desktop’s Beta, Google Inbox
during the Beta, or nowadays Google Earth.

------
Pigo
My 5 year old son has recently become fascinated with the solar system, and
Mars in particular. He's really interested in Olympus Mons too, which is why I
was bummed to see it was mostly missing from the map. Why would there not be
enough images of the second largest mountain in the solar system? Is it
because it's too tall?

~~~
bastawhiz
They do have altitude data. Hold control and drag the view, and you'll be able
to explore it in 3D. As for why there's not much in the way of imagery, I'd
guess it's because Olympus Mons is at least 40 million miles away at any given
point.

------
NoGravitas
It's kind of cool clicking around on Mars, looking at the places I recognize
from KSR'r Mars Trilogy.

------
GotAnyMegadeth
Does anyone know where Olympus Mons is? Ever since I was a child I've been
fascinated by the idea of the tallest mountain in the solar system!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympus_Mons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympus_Mons)

~~~
sswaner
[https://www.google.com/maps/space/mars/@18.5922828,-133.6897...](https://www.google.com/maps/space/mars/@18.5922828,-133.6897586,389426m/data=!3m1!1e3)

Still looking for the Ares 3 base.

------
jejones3141
Darn. I was hoping to be able to get directions.

~~~
irl_
I can understand it not doing interplanetary directions, but it doesn't have
any public transport data at all for any planet but Earth. ):

------
Pt_
Disappointed there is no route planner on Mars

------
Robotbeat
Do they have a VR version of this, yet? I like Google Earth VR, but really
want to try Mars and the Moon.

------
taksintikk
"This link is not supported in the mobile version of Google Maps."

Go Mo Google!

------
mnw21cam
Shame the whole planet is completely black until you zoom right in though.

------
sleepychu
Why are there big strips of much high res imagery on the moon?

------
stijnsanders
ooh! ooh! now do [https://www.google.com/sky/](https://www.google.com/sky/)
(pretty please)

------
juhq
I wonder when we'll get directions on moon and mars

------
MikeTaylor
Where is the Watney Triangle?

------
martin1b
What? No street view??

~~~
s0rce
[https://www.google.com/maps/space/mars/@19.098134,-33.250752...](https://www.google.com/maps/space/mars/@19.098134,-33.250752,3a,75y,78.75h,63.33t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s4P8_06sQinAAAAQ3sfdQ1w!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo0.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3D4P8_06sQinAAAAQ3sfdQ1w%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D175.5%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i14000!8i7000)

------
pulse7
Doesn't work with Chrome Zoom > 100%

------
acobster
I can see my house!

