3D planet view · Viking observational composite
Explore Mars in COSMOS
A historical Viking mosaic with colour blended over mapped surface morphology. Approach reveals genuine imagery to about 326 m/pixel. Rotation follows the selected date; the mosaic is not live. Terrain relief is not yet modelled. The link below opens the explorer, flying the camera to Mars with its position set by the archived planetary state.
Measured facts
- Mean radius
- 3,390 kmPublished mean radius stored as renderer geometry.
- Mean diameter
- 6,779 km
- Distance from Earth at the recorded epoch
- 279,189,487 km · 15.52 minutes light time
- Closest camera approach
- 3,790 km from the body centre (400 km above the mean-radius surface)
What opens when you follow this link
COSMOS opens in the same continuous 3D scene and moves the camera to Mars. Nothing reloads, and the breadcrumb trail stays clickable for the way back outward through the Solar System, the measured stellar catalogue and the Galactic view.
If your browser cannot run WebGL2, this page is still the useful part: it carries the identity, the measured values and the provenance, in text.
Where the full record lives
This page is the share link. The complete data record for Mars — delivered imagery resolution, observation epoch, source licence, processing chain and every disclosed limitation — is on its reference page, which is linked below.
Datasets behind this page
- JPL Horizons planetary state archive (2020–2040)NASA/JPL Horizons · derived-scientific-model · One discrete geometric state vector per object at JD 2461281.5 TDB
- USGS/NASA Viking MDIM 2.1 colorized global mosaicNASA/JPL Mars Trek · USGS Astrogeology · NASA Ames · observational-composite · 232 m/pixel source; 326 m/pixel finest delivered tiles at equator
Content updated 2026-09-26. Every value on this page is computed from the shipped datasets; where a source publishes no value, the page says so instead of estimating one.