“that spooky post-geographical feeling”

A curious add-on is now available for Google Earth, the proprietary software that synthesizes satellite images, aerial photography, and GIS data into a searchable, virtual globe. If one turns off all Earth-related layers—roads, traffic, borders, labels, and terrain—it is then possible to overlay what is called OnMars, a series of .kml files that “wrap the Earth’s sphere in Mars basemaps.” The result is a virtual model of the red planet, updated weekly with the latest images from the fleet of satellites currently in Mars orbit. This three-dimensional globe, accessible from any PC with broadband access, can be tilted, zoomed, set rotating, and when angled just correctly, takes on the syntax of a flight simulator’s camera eye. Yet when one enters a Martian location into the “fly to:” field such as “Victoria,” the crater on whose rim the SUV-sized Opportunity rover is currently perched, Earth’s skeleton of geographic coordinates surfaces from under the image of the Martian sands, and we are given a list of ports, streets, cities, and islands within the former British Empire as it stands grafted onto the virtual space of this synthesized alien landscape. OnMars unearths our originary experience of Martian space as the image itself. Find out how you can help!