Sol Atlas

A layered, game-style Marswalk planner built on real NASA Mars data.

The SOL Explorers · NASA Space Apps Challenge 2026 · challenge: Interplanetary Survival Guide: Martian Map

Live demo: https://sol-atlas.netlify.app · Project log: PROJECT_LOG.md · Handoff for developers and AI assistants: AGENTS.md · AI use: AI_DISCLOSURE.md

In The Martian, Mark Watney survives by doing the maths himself: oxygen, distance, daylight, terrain. Sol Atlas does that maths for the first crews. It stacks data from five NASA missions and ESA's Mars Express on one 3D map, finds the safest route for a walk on foot to any point you pick, and checks whether the astronaut gets home with oxygen to spare. If the plan comes up short, the EVA simulation shows exactly where the suit runs dry. Then you can put on the helmet and walk the real terrain at eye height.

This is the phase-1 prototype made for the 240-second local-judging video. Jezero Crater is the only site unlocked; the other landing sites are marked "phase 2".

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Contents

• How it works
• What's new in the polish build
• Data layers
• The science behind the numbers
• Places on the map
• Controls
• Phones, tablets and performance
• Recording the pitch video
• Run it locally
• Rebuild the NASA data
• Deploy
• Project structure
• Limitations and roadmap
• AI use disclosure
• Credits
• Licence

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How it works

Sol Atlas has three levels. You move between them by scrolling, like zooming from a system map down to a planet surface in a space game.

1. Orbit

A rotating Mars with real Viking colour, MOLA relief, a thin dusty atmosphere, Phobos and Deimos. Ten landing sites are marked. Scroll in and the camera locks onto Jezero; scroll again, or click, to descend. A live mission clock shows the Perseverance sol, local time at Jezero, the Martian season and the current Earth–Mars signal delay.

2. Jezero Crater

The whole crater (89 × 101 km) as a 3D block, built from the orbital imagery and elevation model NASA prepared for Perseverance. The terrain is lit by the real Sun position, with shadows that move as you drag the time-of-day slider.

Crater	Elevation + contours

The gold line is Perseverance's real drive path: 555 end-of-drive positions from NASA/JPL's mission waypoint feed, sol 0 to 2022 (October 2026, 45.25 km). It runs from the landing site, around Séítah, across the delta and up the crater rim. Layer 7 toggles it.

3. Marswalk zone

A 6 × 6 km zone around Perseverance's landing site, Séítah, the delta front and the Three Forks sample depot, built from a 25 cm per pixel HiRISE mosaic and a 1 m elevation model. This is where you plan the walk:

• Start from a science goal. Pick a mission goal and the plan follows from it: Bring the samples home (the Three Forks tubes), Date the crater floor (Séítah's olivine bedrock), Look for signs of ancient life (the delta front's lake sediments), or the Grand tour. Each goal says why this spot answers it, with its source.
• See it before you go. Each science stop carries a real Perseverance photo taken at that spot (Navcam or Mastcam-Z raw images), so the crew knows what the place looks like before they arrive. Hover a stop and click its photo, or press PHOTO in the plan: it opens full screen, and ‹ › or the arrow keys step through all the stop photos.
• Route anywhere, like a maps app. Click or tap any spot to drop a pin. The card shows its coordinates, elevation, slope class and distance from the airlock. ROUTE HERE plans the walk there and back; ADD STOP adds it to the plan; STAND HERE puts you there in the helmet view.
• Safest route. Sol Atlas finds the path that uses the least oxygen while avoiding slopes too steep to walk. A red dashed line shows the straight-line path for comparison.
• The Watney check. Distance, EVA time, oxygen used, oxygen left at the airlock, daylight left, the EVA's radiation dose and the storm-shelter time (how long the walk back takes from the farthest point if a solar storm is forecast), ending in MARSWALK READY, GO WITH CAUTION or NO-GO.
• Rover with a walkback limit. Switch the plan from ON FOOT to ROVER + WALKBACK and the crew drives between stops on an unpressurised rover. Apollo 15–17 drove under the same rule: never go farther than the crew could walk home if the rover broke down. Sol Atlas checks it along the whole drive and marks the walkback limit in red when a plan breaks it.
• Point of no return. If the suit can't carry enough oxygen, a red marker shows the last point where turning back still keeps the reserve.
• EVA flyover. Simulate the walk with a chase camera and a wrist display (next stop, oxygen left, dust). The wrist turns amber past the point of no return and red when the reserve is reached. The profile chart follows EV1 as it walks.
• Where the oxygen runs out. If the plan needs more O₂ than the suit holds, the planner marks the exact spot and time the tank runs dry, and draws the unreachable rest of the route as red dashes. In the simulation, EV1 stops there and its marker turns red. The wrist display then shows how long a mayday takes to reach Earth (about 14 minutes now) and when the earliest reply could arrive. Nobody on Earth can help in time, so the plan has to be right before the airlock opens.

Planned route	Point of no return

EVA flyover	Slope hazard

Drop a pin, route there	O₂ runs out: EV1 lost

4. Helmet view

Press F, ◉ HELMET VIEW, or STAND HERE on a pin to stand on the terrain at 1.8 m eye height, with no vertical exaggeration.

• Real horizon. The skyline isn't painted. For every compass bearing, Sol Atlas marches the CTX crater elevation model outward (allowing for the curve of Mars) and keeps the highest angle. The crater rim and the delta sit exactly where they would for someone standing there.
• Mars sky. A dusty butterscotch sky with the Sun at its real position for the chosen local time. Around the Sun there is the blue glow Perseverance photographs at sunset, and distant ground fades into haze.
• The suit is on the clock. Walking speed follows the slope, and the suit burns O₂ by the same Pandolf metabolic model the planner uses, under a time warp shown on screen. The helmet HUD shows O₂ left, metabolic power, O₂ burn rate, position, slope underfoot and distance to the airlock, plus a compass with bearings to your stops.
• Overlays still work. Switch on slope hazard or contours and they paint onto the ground in front of you.
• Ride along. Start the EVA simulation in the helmet and you walk the route as EV1. If the plan runs out of oxygen, the view collapses where it happens.

Slope hazard as a helmet overlay	O₂ exhausted, in the helmet

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What's new in the polish build

Feature	Why it matters
O₂-exhaustion point on the route, in the profile and in the simulation	You see where a bad plan kills the astronaut, not just that it's NO-GO
Mayday light-time at the moment O₂ runs out	Shows why Mars crews must plan for themselves: Earth hears the call ~14 min later
Drop a pin, route anywhere	Plan to any point in the zone, not only named places
Helmet view with the real skyline	The only first-person view we know of that's built on the actual DTM and horizon
Perseverance's real traverse	More real mission data: 555 drive fixes over 2,022 sols
Synthesised sound (♪ / M)	Wind, lock-on, alarms, suit breathing. All generated in the browser, no audio files
● REC (R)	Records the tab (HUD and sound included) to a video file for the pitch

Sound and REC came from ideas in a teammate's early prototype. Its images and several coordinates weren't reusable (AI-generated pictures, approximate positions), so only the ideas were carried over.

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Data layers

Every layer is real mission data. Nothing is hand-painted. The exact files, with links, ready to paste into the Space Apps submission form, are in docs/SUBMISSION_DATA.md.

Level	Layer	Mission / instrument	Product
Orbit	Visible colour	Viking Orbiters	MDIM 2.1 global mosaic, NASA Ames colour (232 m/px)
Orbit	Topography, relief	Mars Global Surveyor · MOLA	MOLA 128/64 ppd merged DEM (463 m/px)
Orbit	Night thermal IR	Mars Odyssey · THEMIS	USGS controlled night-IR mosaic (100 m/px)
Orbit, zoomed in on Jezero and Isidis	Relief, elevation colours	ESA Mars Express · HRSC, with MGS MOLA	HRSC and MOLA blended DEM v2, 200 m/px (USGS; HRSC data ESA/DLR/FU Berlin)
Crater	Visible	MRO · CTX	Mars 2020 Science Investigation CTX orthomosaic, 5 m/px (JPL)
Crater	Elevation, slope, contours	MRO · CTX stereo	Mars 2020 Science Investigation CTX DEM, 20 m/px (JPL)
Crater + zone	Ground firmness	Mars Odyssey · THEMIS	Night-IR mosaic as a thermal-inertia proxy, 100 m/px
Marswalk zone	Visible	MRO · HiRISE	Mars 2020 Terrain-Relative-Navigation orthomosaic, 25 cm/px (USGS)
Marswalk zone	Elevation, slope, route	MRO · HiRISE stereo	Mars 2020 TRN DTM, 1 m/px (USGS)
Crater + zone	Perseverance traverse	Mars 2020 · rover localisation	NASA/JPL MMGIS "Where is Perseverance?" end-of-drive waypoints, sol 0–2022, from the MMGIS feed
Marswalk zone	Stop photos	Mars 2020 · Navcam, Mastcam-Z	Raw images from the stops: landing site (sol 16), Three Forks (sol 690), Séítah (sol 249), delta front (sol 502)
Helmet view	Skyline	MRO · CTX stereo	Computed from the 20 m crater DEM: highest angle per bearing, Mars curvature included
Phase 2	Minerals	MRO · CRISM	not yet: shown as locked
Phase 2	Live weather	Perseverance · MEDA	not yet: the conditions panel shows typical values, labelled "not live"

"Ground firmness" works like this: rock and coarse grains stay warm through the night, while dust and fine sand cool fast. So night-time infrared brightness tells firm ground from loose ground.

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The science behind the numbers

Feature	How it's calculated	Checked against
Mars clock	NASA GISS Mars24 algorithm (Allison & McEwen 2000)	Mars24 reference date; Perseverance landing = sol 0
Earth–Mars signal delay	JPL approximate planetary positions (Keplerian elements, 1800–2050)	11 min 22 s on landing day, 18 Feb 2021, matching NASA's figure
Sun and shadows	Solar declination and hour angle for Jezero; shadows ray-marched through the elevation model on the GPU	Sunrise and sunset shown in the HUD
Safest route	A* search on a 512 × 512 grid from the HiRISE DTM. Step cost is metabolic energy, so the route minimises oxygen; cells steeper than the walking limit are avoided	Default loop solves in under 40 ms
Walking cost	Pandolf et al. (1977) load-carriage equation, scaled to Mars gravity (0.38 g) with a pressure-suit penalty; Tobler-style speed vs. grade; 1 L O₂ ≈ 20.1 kJ	Flat walking at 0.9 m/s ≈ 293 W ≈ 0.075 kg O₂ per hour, the same rate our 0.60 kg / 8 h suit assumption is sized on
Point of no return	First point on the way out where O₂ used so far + O₂ to walk straight back (plus a 25 % detour allowance) would eat into the reserve	Default loop: 0.30 kg suit → PNR at 3.92 km, 0.25 kg → 3.23 km (both on the leg to Three Forks)
O₂ runs out	The EVA's walk/stop timeline carries cumulative O₂; the first moment it reaches the tank size gives the time and place	0.20 kg suit on the default loop: O₂ out at 6.38 km, 2 h 41 min in, 2.86 km from the airlock
Rover and walkback	Rover legs at 5 km/h with the crew seated (150 W). The walkback check is the point-of-no-return test applied to the whole drive, home leg included: O₂ used so far + O₂ to walk straight home (25 % detour allowance) must stay above the reserve	Default loop with a 0.30 kg suit: NO-GO on foot (PNR at 3.92 km), READY by rover (closest call 0.19 of 0.23 kg). With 0.20 kg: walkback limit at 3.90 km
Radiation dose	EVA time × the surface dose rate Curiosity's RAD measured, 0.64 mSv per day (Hassler et al. 2014). A suit adds little shielding against cosmic rays	Default loop: ≈ 0.11 mSv, against NASA's 600 mSv career limit
Storm shelter	Longest straight walk back to the airlock from any point on the route, at flat walking speed with the PNR's 25 % detour allowance: how long the crew is exposed if a solar-storm warning comes in

Default EVA assumptions, all editable in the planner: 75 kg astronaut, 58 kg suit and backpack, no extra science kit (0–30 kg slider, added to the load in the walking model: 20 kg raises the default loop from 0.30 to 0.38 kg of O₂), 0.60 kg usable O₂ (about 8 h), 25 % reserve, 20° walking-slope limit, 20 min per science stop.

The default plan (LZ-A → Octavia E. Butler Landing → Three Forks → Séítah → LZ-A) comes out at 9.75 km, 4 h 02 min, 0.30 kg of O₂, 50 % margin: MARSWALK READY.

Mission goal	Stops (from and back to LZ-A)	Route	O₂	Call
Grand tour	Landing site, Three Forks, Séítah	9.75 km	0.30 kg	READY
Bring the samples home	Three Forks	8.74 km	0.24 kg	READY
Date the crater floor	Séítah	5.46 km	0.16 kg	READY
Look for signs of ancient life	Delta front	9.30 km	0.26 kg	CAUTION (steep sections up to 17° on the delta)

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Places on the map

Place	Position	Notes
Octavia E. Butler Landing	18.4447°N 77.4508°E	Perseverance touchdown, 18 Feb 2021
Three Forks Sample Depot	18.4528°N 77.4082°E	10 sample tubes laid sols 653–690 (Dec 2022 – Jan 2023) at the foot of the delta. Mean of the rover positions at each tube drop, from NASA's PDS Three Forks Depot archive
Séítah	18.4339°N 77.4430°E	Where Perseverance parked on Séítah's edge, sols 248–278, and cored Coulettes (sol 271). NASA/JPL MMGIS waypoints
Delta front	18.4589°N 77.4061°E	Where Perseverance parked on the delta front, sols 477–502, and cored Skyland (sol 495). NASA/JPL MMGIS waypoints
LZ-A, crew landing zone	18.4500°N 77.4850°E	Our proposal, not a NASA site: flat lava floor, over 4 km from the depot so engine blast can't reach it
Western Fan (delta), Belva crater, Neretva Vallis, Pliva Vallis, crater rim	approx.	Crater-view labels, placed by eye on the CTX mosaic
Acidalia Planitia "Ares III"	31.2°N 28.5°W	Fiction: Mark Watney's base in The Martian (Andy Weir)

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Controls

	Orbit	Crater / Marswalk zone
Drag	spin the planet	orbit the camera
Right-drag or Shift-drag		pan
Scroll	zoom; locks onto Jezero when close	zoom toward the cursor. Keep scrolling out to go up a level
Click	Jezero, or the lock-on, to descend	the Marswalk zone to enter it. In the zone, click anywhere to drop a pin (ROUTE HERE / ADD STOP / STAND HERE), or click a named place to add it as a stop
Keys	1–3 layers · G grid · Space rotation · Enter descend	1–7 layers · WASD pan · Enter enter zone · Esc go up · Space run the EVA simulation · F helmet view
Anywhere	C autopilot · H hide HUD · K captions on/off · M sound · R record
Touch	drag to spin · pinch to zoom · tap Jezero to descend	drag to orbit · pinch to zoom · two-finger drag to pan · tap to select

Helmet view: drag to look · WASD / arrows to walk (Shift = faster) · Q/E turn · click or tap a spot to walk there · scroll or pinch to zoom · [ ] or the − / + buttons change the time warp · Esc or F to leave.

Helmet view on phones: turn the phone sideways (on Android it goes fullscreen and locks to landscape). The left stick walks: a light push is a slow walk, full push jogs. The right stick looks around. You can still tap a spot to walk there.

On desktop, each side panel has a small ‹ / › tab on its inner edge that tucks it away; the tab stays at the screen edge to bring it back, and the choice is remembered.

On phones and upright tablets, the side panels open as a sheet from the tabs at the bottom of the screen (JEZERO / CRATER / PLANNER and LAYERS). Tap the map to close the sheet.

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Phones, tablets and performance

Sol Atlas picks a quality level for each device when it loads. You can force one by adding it to the URL:

Level	Chosen for	What changes	Force it with
High	desktops and laptops	8k globe, full-resolution terrain, up to 2× sharpness	?q=high
Medium	tablets, 4-core or low-memory laptops	4k globe, full terrain, up to 1.5× sharpness	?q=medium
Low	phones	half-resolution textures (about 11 MB download instead of 40 MB), terrain meshes with 4× fewer points, 30 fps cap, no screen overlays	?q=low

On every level:

• Adaptive resolution lowers the render resolution when frames get slow and raises it again when there's headroom.
• Shadows are baked into a texture only when the sun or the relief changes, instead of being re-calculated for every pixel on every frame.
• Everything is decoded, compiled and uploaded behind the loading screen, so the zoom transitions never stall on first use.

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Recording the pitch video

Press C (or ▶ AUTOPILOT) for a scripted fly-through of about two minutes, with captions. It follows the WHAT and SO WHAT sections of our pitch script:

1. Orbit, then the MOLA and THEMIS layers.
2. Lock onto Jezero and descend.
3. Crater: elevation and contours, ground firmness, slope hazard.
4. Marswalk zone: the safest route.
5. Perseverance's real drive path across the crater.
6. "What if the suit carried only 0.20 kg of O₂?" The point of no return appears and the call is NO-GO. "And if they walk anyway?" EV1 stops in red where the O₂ runs out, and the mayday light-time appears.
7. EVA flyover with the wrist display.
8. Pick Three Forks: the route draws and MARSWALK READY shows.
9. Holo-mode end card.

Tips:

• Press K to hide the captions if you're recording your own voiceover, and H to hide the HUD for clean B-roll.
• ■ STOP AUTOPILOT (dimmed during the run), Esc, or any click or scroll on the map hands control back to you. Stopping puts back whatever the autopilot changed (O₂ setting, layers, plan).
• Built-in recorder: press ● REC (or R), choose this tab and allow audio, then press C. The controls hide during the autopilot, so the take is clean. Press R again (or the browser's Stop sharing) and a .webm downloads. Desktop Chrome or Edge works best.
• Or record at 1920 × 1080 with OBS, or with the Xbox Game Bar (Win + Alt + R).

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Run it locally

You need Node.js 20 or newer and a desktop browser with a graphics card (Chrome, Edge or Firefox).

git clone https://github.com/saracen66/the-sol-explorers
cd the-sol-explorers
npm install
npm run dev          # opens http://localhost:5173

The processed NASA data is already in the repo (public/data/, about 40 MB), so you don't need Python to run the app.

Quality is picked automatically; see Phones, tablets and performance to force a level.

Production build:

npm run build        # static site in dist/
npm run preview      # serve dist/ at http://localhost:4173

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Rebuild the NASA data

scripts/build_data.py downloads the source data from the public USGS Astrogeology archive (asc-pds-services on AWS S3) and bakes the textures and heightmaps in public/data/. It streams only the parts it needs. For example, the largest source is a 3.4 GB HiRISE mosaic, and the script reads just the 5 × 5 km zone.

pip install rasterio numpy pillow scipy
npm run data                           # everything (a few minutes)
python3 scripts/build_data.py crater   # or one stage: global | region | crater | site | lite

Downloads are cached in .cache/, which is git-ignored. The lite stage writes the half-resolution phone textures to public/data/lite/ and a 4k globe map for medium-quality devices. Heightmaps are stored as PNG images: each 16-bit height is split across the red and green channels (height = R × 256 + G), so any static web host can serve them without loss.

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Deploy

The site is set up for Netlify with netlify.toml: it builds with npm run build and publishes dist/.

Netlify site: sol-atlas → https://sol-atlas.netlify.app

To publish from GitHub, with automatic redeploys on every push:

1. Open https://app.netlify.com/projects/sol-atlas.
2. Go to Project configuration → Build & deploy → Continuous deployment → Link repository.
3. Choose GitHub → saracen66/the-sol-explorers.
4. Pick the branch to publish (main once the work is merged). Build settings are read from netlify.toml.

To deploy by hand from your own computer:

npm install -g netlify-cli
netlify login
netlify link --id 3cde891d-2654-4f7a-b31d-30e5ad235ca8
netlify deploy --build --prod

dist/ also works on GitHub Pages or any other static host, because all paths are relative.

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Project structure

index.html              HUD skeleton (panels, loader, overlays)
netlify.toml            Netlify build + cache headers
vite.config.js          Vite config (relative base path)
src/
  main.js               app: level transitions (orbit ⇄ crater ⇄ zone), input, render loop
  styles.css            HUD styling
  orbit/                Mars globe: planet shader (layers, zoom-in detail, relief, lock-on rings),
                        atmosphere, moons, stars
  terrain/              TerrainView: 3D terrain, layer shader, GPU shadows, contours, holo mode, traverse, camera
                        Planner: stops, A* routes, EVA budget, point of no return, O₂-out point, EVA flyover
                        FirstPerson: helmet view (sky, real skyline, walking, suit HUD, ride-along)
                        Pin: drop a pin, route here / add stop / stand here
                        pathfinding.js (A*), eva.js (metabolic + O₂ model)
  ui/                   HUD panels and legends, elevation-profile chart, labels pinned to 3D points,
                        sound.js (Web Audio synth), recorder.js (tab → video)
  lib/                  marstime.js (Mars24, signal delay, sun position), geo.js
  core/                 asset loader, quality levels + adaptive resolution, scene crossfade, autopilot
  data/places.js        landing sites, points of interest, default Marswalk plan
scripts/build_data.py   NASA/USGS → web data pipeline
public/data/            processed textures + heightmaps + manifest.json (lite/ = phone versions),
                        m20_traverse.json (Perseverance end-of-drive waypoints, sol 0–2022)
docs/screenshots/       images used in this README
PROJECT_LOG.md          full record of how the project was built
AGENTS.md / CLAUDE.md   handoff: architecture, conventions, testing, deploy, open items
scripts/smoke.cjs       Playwright smoke test (desktop or DEVICE="iPhone 14")

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Limitations and roadmap

Known limitations in phase 1

• Only Jezero is unlocked.
• The CRISM mineral layer and live MEDA weather aren't in yet.
• Some place positions are approximate (see Places).
• The EVA model is a planning estimate, not flight-certified. Its assumptions are listed in the planner.
• The helmet view's close-up pebbles and grain are procedural. HiRISE resolves 25 cm, so anything smaller is decoration, and the terrain mesh is sampled every ~5 m.
• The traverse is a snapshot of NASA's feed (sol 2022, October 2026). python3 scripts/build_data.py traverse refreshes it.

Next

• More sites, including ice-rich plains from NASA's SWIM ice-mapping project.
• CRISM minerals.
• Live MEDA weather.
• Dust-storm alerts from orbit.
• An offline mode for suits and rovers.

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AI use disclosure

The code, data-processing scripts and documentation of Sol Atlas were written with an AI coding assistant, Claude Code (Anthropic), under the team's direction; the team set the goals, tested every version and asked for fixes. The pitch script and background research were also drafted with AI help. All map data is real NASA mission data. No image, video or sound in the app or this repository is AI-generated (the screenshots are captures of the running app), and the app makes no AI calls at runtime. The full statement, with a checklist for the pitch video, is in AI_DISCLOSURE.md.

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Credits

Team: The SOL Explorers, NASA Space Apps Challenge 2026, Bangladesh.

Member	Role
S.M. Riasijtur Rahman	Team owner
MD. Yemtias Jani Mishad	Team member
Md Rifat Hasan	Team member
Sayma Ferdousi Fariha	Team member

Data:

• NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona (HiRISE)
• NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS (CTX)
• NASA / JPL-Caltech / Arizona State University (THEMIS)
• NASA / GSFC (MOLA)
• NASA / USGS (Viking MDIM 2.1, NASA Ames colour)
• ESA / DLR / FU Berlin (Mars Express HRSC), in the USGS HRSC and MOLA blended DEM (Fergason, Hare & Laura 2018)
• USGS Astrogeology Science Center (mosaics and DTMs)
• Mars 2020 science maps: Mangold et al. (2021), Science
• Perseverance waypoints: NASA/JPL-Caltech MMGIS ("Where is Perseverance?")

Ideas: synthesised sound design and in-app recording were inspired by a teammate's early prototype.

NASA imagery is not copyrighted. No NASA logos are used.

Built with: three.js, Vite and Python (rasterio, NumPy, Pillow, SciPy). Fonts: Rajdhani, Orbitron, JetBrains Mono.

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Licence

The code in this repository is open source under the Apache License 2.0, as NASA Space Apps requires for work built for the challenge. The NASA data in public/data/ is not copyrighted and is credited above. The fonts are under the SIL Open Font Licence; three.js and Vite are under the MIT licence.