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Interactive Mars panorama: As close as you'll get to being there

Interactive Mars panorama: As close as you'll get to being there

Get a feel for what a vacation to Mars would look like with a moveable 360-degree view stitched together from images sent back by the Curiosity rover.

Take a visual trip to Mars.

(Credit: Screenshot by Amanda Kooser/CNET)

My brother sometimes threatens to run away and join the eventual one-way human mission to Mars. He can get a better idea of what would await him by checking out an interactive, panoramic view of the planet as seen by the Curiosity rover.

Panographer Andrew Bodrov posted an explorable image of Mars to 360Cities. This is what it would it would look like if Google had been able to attach a Street View camera to the rover. You can have a look at it below.

You can zoom and rotate the image to get a detailed, immersive view of the rocky surface, horizon, and the rover itself. It's the next best thing to being there, but without the crushing cold and lack of oxygen.

The Curiosity panorama will also connect you to a Spirit rover panorama, where this tracks image comes from.

(Credit: Screenshot by Amanda Kooser/CNET)

(Credit: Blake Stevenson)

Low Latency is a weekly comic on CNET's Crave blog written by CNET editor and podcast host Jeff Bakalar and illustrated by Blake Stevenson. Be sure to check Crave every Thursday at 8 a.m. PT for new panels! Want more? Stay tuned!

Take a virtual tour of Mars on your iPhone or iPad

Good morning, Red Planet! Take an interactive tour by viewing this super-sexy panorama on your iDevice.

(Credit: Screenshot by Rick Broida/CNET)

If you've been following the Curiosity rover's progress even a little, you've probably seen the cool360-degree Mars panorama that hit the Web a couple days ago.

As CNET's Amanda Kooser pointed out, it's "about as close as you'll get to being there."

Now you can get even closer, virtually speaking. It turns out that the panorama works with gyroscopes, meaning that if you view it on your iPhone or iPad, you'll get a much more interactive experience.

Stop listening to me describe it and go do it:

1. Open up the Safari browser on your iDevice.
2. Point your browser to this link: http://www.360cities.net/image/curiosity-rover-martian-solar-day-2
3. Tilt your screen. Raise your screen. Lower your screen. Turn in place. See what happens.

Are you grinning like a little kid yet? Call me easily impressed (or a little kid), but this takes one of the coolest things I've ever seen and makes it even cooler.

Mars. In full panorama. Moving as I move. I'm in geek heaven.

By the way, you can still pinch in or out to change the zoom. My advice: load up Strauss' "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (better known as the soundtrack to "2001: A Space Odyssey"), blast it full volume, and imagine yourself standing on Mars.

Then sit down and marvel at what we've accomplished as a species. Rockets. Mars rovers. Mars rovers with cameras. Interplanetary connectivity. And handheld devices for viewing it all. Damn.

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