Choose what to explore on Mars

ASU has released two new applications using Google Earth. "The first of two new features lets anyone, anywhere, recommend places on Mars to photograph with ASU's THEMIS camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. The second new feature shows the most recent infrared images of Mars sent back to Earth from the THEMIS camera."

To suggest a place for THEMIS to photograph, viewers need two things:

Google Earth 5.0 and a file that is updated each week giving the spacecraft's Mars orbital groundtrack. Google Earth 5.0 is available at http://earth.google.com.

To get the orbital track, users should go to http://suggest.mars.asu.edu and follow the simple steps to register.

The second new feature developed is

a new Google Earth feature called Live From Mars. It shows the latest infrared images from THEMIS as soon as the mission team at ASU receives them; look for the new feature among the Mars Gallery layers in Google Earth 5.0.

When the layer is clicked on, viewers see the Martian globe with the most recent THEMIS infrared images displayed on the surface, each flagged with a square symbol. Viewers can zoom in on each image to see details more clearly.