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This is a project created at the Lausanne camp of the International Space Apps Challenge 2012 and submitted as a solution proposal for the Planetary Data System Challenge. The challenge is to:

Develop a tool for citizen scientists, educators, and students to access NASA’s Planetary Data System data sets, which is available at http://pds.nasa.gov/

Relevant links

Presentation by Dr. Anton Ivanov in Lausanne http://db.tt/OXoB0Onl that provides the basic info about this project and links to sample data on page 7.

Process

1. Get the list of all images from http://hirise-pds.lpl.arizona.edu/PDS/RDR
2. Process the JP2 format, programmatically extract a tileset of the image
3. Web hosting of the tiles in a mobile HTML5 application to browse the map
4. Extraction of relevant Mars metadata (geo-coordinates, features, etc.) from PDS
5. Visualization of terrestrial objects as an overlay on the map for educational purposes

Data

• Home: http://hirise-pds.lpl.arizona.edu/
• Doc: http://hirise-pds.lpl.arizona.edu/PDS/AAREADME.TXT
• Index: http://hirise-pds.lpl.arizona.edu/PDS/INDEX/RDRCUMINDEX.TAB (there are 44'330 images)
• Sample: http://hirise-pds.lpl.arizona.edu/PDS/RDR/PSP/ORB_004100_004199/PSP_004134_1995/

Tools

Image extraction and processing: OpenJPEG, J2K, djatoka for converting Jpeg2000 format, more info on djakota

Map visualization: OpenLayers

Metadata extraction: PHP

Mobile app: jQuery Mobile

Inspirations

• Mars in Google Earth, includes HIRISE data!
• User guide to Google Earth's Mars
• Google Mars
• Mars GIS Explorer
• Mars Facility Mapserver
• Mars Image Explorer
• Mars 3D in VRML
• THEMIS images
• HiView software for accessing HIRISE data
• Interactive Mars maps
• A mapping project by Oleg
• Crowdsourcing moon exploration
• NASA crowdsourcing to find life on Mars
• Manned Mars Surface Missions 1966 (WIRED)
• Crowdsourcing Mars mapping