# Walk on the Moon and Mars in 3D: the Real Ground at Eight Landing Sites

> Stand where Apollo 15 landed, drive Perseverance across Jezero, then look up and watch Phobos cross the Sun. Eight landing sites built from orbiters’ height models, and the skies of six other worlds.

By Ivan Akselrot. Published 2026-11-12. Category: Solar System. Tags: Moon, Mars, landing sites, Apollo 15, Perseverance, sky from Mars. 10 min read.
Canonical: https://blog.spaceradar.ai/walk-on-the-moon-and-mars-in-3d-landing-sites/

Yes, you can walk on the Moon and Mars in your browser, on the real ground. Space Radar 2.0.0 lets you stand at eight landing sites, from Apollo 11 to Perseverance’s Jezero crater, on terrain built from the stereo height models that orbiters have measured there, at their true vertical scale. You walk, look round, drive a rover on Mars, and then look up at the sky as it is from that spot at that moment.

Open [Apollo 15’s site at Hadley](https://www.spaceradar.ai/#ground=apollo-15) and you are 1.7 metres above the ground, about eye height, a few paces from the Lunar Module’s descent stage. The ascent stage is gone, as it should be: it took Dave Scott and Jim Irwin home in 1971. To the south rises Mons Hadley Delta. The tracks of their rover are drawn on the ground where the traverse maps put them. At true scale the mountain is a surprise: it is further away and far bigger than it looks in the photographs, because nothing on the Moon gives the eye a size to judge by.

![The Apollo 15 landing site in Space Radar: grey lunar ground under a black sky full of stars, with the broad slope of Mons Hadley Delta filling the middle of the view](/media/walk-on-the-moon-and-mars-in-3d-landing-sites/apollo-15-south.jpg)
*Hadley, looking south. The heights are LROC’s stereo model of the site, 2 metres a post near the lander, at their true vertical scale. Nothing on the ground is invented.*

## The eight sites

Four are on the Moon and four on Mars. Each opens from a link of its own:

- **Apollo 11**, Tranquility Base, 1969: [#ground=apollo-11](https://www.spaceradar.ai/#ground=apollo-11)
- **Apollo 15**, Hadley–Apennine, 1971: [#ground=apollo-15](https://www.spaceradar.ai/#ground=apollo-15)
- **Apollo 17**, Taurus–Littrow, 1972: [#ground=apollo-17](https://www.spaceradar.ai/#ground=apollo-17)
- **Chang’e 4**, Von Kármán crater on the far side, 2019: [#ground=change-4](https://www.spaceradar.ai/#ground=change-4)
- **Curiosity**, Bradbury Landing in Gale crater, 2012: [#ground=gale](https://www.spaceradar.ai/#ground=gale)
- **Perseverance**, Jezero crater, 2021: [#ground=jezero](https://www.spaceradar.ai/#ground=jezero)
- **Zhurong**, Utopia Planitia, 2021: [#ground=utopia](https://www.spaceradar.ai/#ground=utopia)
- **Opportunity**, where it stopped for good in 2018, on the rim of Endeavour crater: [#ground=opportunity](https://www.spaceradar.ai/#ground=opportunity)

The last one needs a word. Opportunity landed in Eagle crater in 2004, but no high-resolution height model covers Eagle crater. So the stage stands where the rover’s traverse map ends, in Perseverance Valley, 25 km away, and the first line on screen says that this is not the landing site. I would rather show the right place with a note than the wrong place without one.

![Opportunity’s last stop in Space Radar: an orange slope of Endeavour crater’s rim running down to the right under a pale sky, with the small rover far below](/media/walk-on-the-moon-and-mars-in-3d-landing-sites/opportunity-walk.jpg)
*Perseverance Valley, on Endeavour crater’s rim. The panel says plainly that this is Opportunity’s last stop, not where it landed.*

## Where the ground comes from

From orbit, a camera can photograph the same patch of ground twice from slightly different angles, and the difference between the two pictures gives the height of every point. These stereo models are called DTMs, digital terrain models, and the mission teams publish them.

On the Moon the near ground comes from [LROC’s](https://data.lroc.im-ldi.com/lroc/rdr_product_select) narrow-angle camera on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter: 2 metres a post at Apollo 11 and 15, 5 metres at Apollo 17 and Chang’e 4. On Mars it is [HiRISE](https://hirise-pds.lpl.arizona.edu/PDS/DTM/) on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, 1 metre a post. Each site is a 2 km square round the lander at that detail. Beyond it the same model carries on out to 30 km where its strip reaches, and then a global model takes over: SLDEM2015 on the Moon and MOLA on Mars. Where two models overlap, one is shifted by their median difference and the join is blended, so there is no step at the seam.

The brightness of the ground is the orbiter’s own photograph of it, LROC at 0.5 to 1.4 m a pixel, HiRISE at 1 m. On Mars the grey is tinted by the measured colour of the ground, taken from the mean of Spirit’s true-colour panorama ([PIA07882](https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA07882)). And the most important sentence on the stage is its first: no boulder or crater is invented. If the model does not have a rock, neither does the scene.

![Curiosity in Gale crater in Space Radar: the rover on rippled orange ground at local noon, with low ridges on the horizon and a hazy butterscotch sky](/media/walk-on-the-moon-and-mars-in-3d-landing-sites/gale-noon.jpg)
*Curiosity at Bradbury Landing, local noon. The ground’s shape is HiRISE’s; its colour is the measured mean of Spirit’s true-colour panorama.*

## Walking, and driving

The controls are the ones you would guess. W, A, S and D or the arrow keys walk, Shift runs, a drag looks round, the wheel or a pinch zooms, and Esc leaves. On a phone there is a touch joystick that keeps walking while you hold it. With reduced motion turned on in your system, turns become 15-degree steps and nothing eases.

The landers and rovers stand at their imaged coordinates: the Lunar Module, Chang’e 4, Curiosity, Perseverance and Zhurong. Which way each one faces is not taken from an image, and the stage says that too. At the Mars sites, “Drive the rover” puts the camera behind it. It follows the slope under its wheels at about 95 times its real top speed of 4.2 cm per second, and the stage tells you so, because driving at the true speed would take an afternoon to cross the frame.

![Perseverance in Jezero crater in Space Radar: the rover small in the middle distance on rolling orange ground, with a list of rise and set times for the Sun, Earth, Phobos and Deimos on the right](/media/walk-on-the-moon-and-mars-in-3d-landing-sites/jezero-walk.jpg)
*Jezero crater on 2 April 2022. The list on the right is worked out for this spot: sunrise, sunset, Phobos and Deimos, and the Earth.*

## The light follows the clock

The Sun stands where it really is for that place and time. Shadows fall from the lander and from the ground itself, and when the Sun drops behind the far skyline, worked out from a 360-degree horizon profile of the 30 km of terrain, the whole site goes into shadow. On Mars a modelled haze fills the shadows and fades the far ground. On the Moon the night is lit a little by the Earth when the Earth is full.

One honest flaw: the orbiter’s photographs carry the shadows of the day they were taken. The scene lights them again with the clock’s Sun without removing the old shadows first, so at some hours you see two sets.

## Now look up

The second half of this feature is the sky. A link such as [#sky=mars:jezero](https://www.spaceradar.ai/#sky=mars:jezero) or [#sky=titan](https://www.spaceradar.ai/#sky=titan) stands you there and turns your eyes upwards. Six worlds have skies: the Moon, Mars, Titan, Europa, and two planets round other stars, Proxima Centauri b and TRAPPIST-1 e.

Each sky is computed from the IAU’s published rotation elements for that world, the same nine-number frame the Earth’s sky uses. Each has its own pole star. From Mars it is Deneb, 9 degrees off; from the Moon, Altais in Draco, 6 degrees off. From Hadley the Earth hangs high in the south, 1.9 degrees across, with its phase. From Gale at dusk it is an evening star with the Moon beside it. Over Titan, Saturn hangs still, because Titan always turns the same face to it. Over Europa, Jupiter does the same.

![The sky above Apollo 15 in Space Radar: black sky dense with stars, the small half-lit Earth labelled near Mars and Jupiter, and a panel listing the pole star and the Sun and Earth rise and set times](/media/walk-on-the-moon-and-mars-in-3d-landing-sites/apollo-15-earth.jpg)
*The sky from Hadley. The panel names the Moon’s pole star (Altais, 6 degrees off) and when the Sun sets and the Earth moves, in local solar time and UTC.*

Mars’s sky colours are measured, not chosen: the daytime butterscotch from Spirit’s panorama, and the blue glow round the setting Sun from [Curiosity’s sunset in Gale](https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA19400). The local solar time at Gale and Jezero agrees with NASA’s [Mars24](https://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/mars24/) algorithm to within 8 seconds between 2012 and 2030, and a test holds it there.

![Dusk in Gale crater in Space Radar: a blue-grey sky over a dark horizon, with Venus and a point labelled the Earth and the Moon low in the west](/media/walk-on-the-moon-and-mars-in-3d-landing-sites/gale-dusk-earth.jpg)
*Dusk in Gale. The bluish sky round the Sun is measured from Curiosity’s own sunset pictures; the Earth and the Moon are the evening star.*

## Phobos across the Sun

The sky panel also lists the next rises and sets of the Sun, the Earth, Phobos and Deimos, and searches ten sols ahead for the moons crossing the Sun. From Jezero in early April 2022, when Perseverance filmed exactly that ([PIA25179](https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA25179)), it finds crossings of 34 to 35 seconds, and the sky draws Phobos as a dark disc on the Sun at 10:54:45 UTC on 2 April 2022. The [Skies of other worlds](https://www.spaceradar.ai/#trip=skies-of-other-worlds&stop=3) trip stops there.

![Phobos crossing the Sun as seen from Jezero crater in Space Radar: a bright white solar disc on a pale peach sky with a small black disc labelled Phobos on its face](/media/walk-on-the-moon-and-mars-in-3d-landing-sites/jezero-phobos-transit.jpg)
*Phobos on the Sun, 2 April 2022, from Jezero. Discs at true size and phase, in plain colours: a picture of the geometry, not a photograph.*

## The two skies round other stars

Proxima b and TRAPPIST-1 e are a different kind of thing, and the stage’s tag reads “modelled”. Both are assumed to be tidally locked, as the discovery papers expect, on circular orbits whose tilt to our line of sight is unknown and assumed. From Proxima b, Proxima is a red disc 1.55 degrees across, Alpha Centauri A and B shine side by side at magnitude −6.8 and −5.5, and our Sun is a star of +0.4 in Cassiopeia. From TRAPPIST-1 e the six sister planets stand on one arc where their transit times put them, the nearest as wide as our Moon. The colours of both skies are illustrative.

![The modelled sky from TRAPPIST-1 e in Space Radar: a dim salmon-coloured sky with the small bright star TRAPPIST-1 low in the middle and labelled planets nearby](/media/walk-on-the-moon-and-mars-in-3d-landing-sites/trappist-1e-sky.jpg)
*TRAPPIST-1 e, modelled. Where the sister planets stand comes from their measured transit times; the colour is illustrative.*

## What it does not do yet

- Eagle crater, Opportunity’s landing site, has no HiRISE height model, so the stage stands at its last stop instead.
- The 49 other exoplanet systems on the map have no sky of their own yet, and Titan’s haze does not bend the light.
- The stages open from links and from the two trips, not yet from a button on each landing site’s card.
- No frame rate was measured on a real phone. Each site is 1.1 to 1.9 MB, fetched only when you land.

Two narrated trips string it all together. [Walk the landing sites](https://www.spaceradar.ai/#trip=walk-the-landing-sites) visits all eight grounds, and [Skies of other worlds](https://www.spaceradar.ai/#trip=skies-of-other-worlds) goes from the Earth seen from the Moon to TRAPPIST-1 e in seven stops. For everything else that came in the same release, see [what’s new in Space Radar 2.0.0](https://blog.spaceradar.ai/space-radar-2-0-whats-new/).

**Fly there in the 3D map:** [Stand at Hadley, where Apollo 15 landed](https://www.spaceradar.ai/#ground=apollo-15). Free, in your browser, no account.

## Questions people ask

### Can I walk on the Moon online?

Yes. Space Radar opens four lunar landing sites in a browser, Apollo 11, 15 and 17 and Chang’e 4, on terrain built from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s stereo height models. You walk with the keyboard or a touch joystick. It is free and needs no account.

### Is the Mars terrain real?

The shape is. Near each lander the heights are HiRISE stereo models at 1 metre a post, at true vertical scale, and the global MOLA model beyond 30 km. The brightness is the orbiter’s own photograph, tinted by the measured colour of Martian ground. No rock or crater is added that the data does not have.

### What does the sky look like from Mars?

By day a butterscotch colour, with a bluish glow round the Sun at sunset, both measured from rover pictures. At night the pole star is Deneb, about 9 degrees from the pole, and the Earth and the Moon appear as an evening or morning star. Phobos crosses the Sun in about half a minute.

### Why does Space Radar not show Opportunity’s landing site?

No high-resolution height model covers Eagle crater, where it landed in 2004. The stage stands instead where the rover stopped in 2018, on Endeavour crater’s rim, and says so on screen.

### Is the sky from Proxima b real?

It is modelled. Star positions are measured, but the planet’s tilt, its day and the colour of its sky are not known; the stage assumes it is tidally locked on a circular orbit and labels the whole view as modelled.

## Sources

1. [LROC NAC digital terrain models (Apollo 11, 15, 17, Chang’e 4)](https://data.lroc.im-ldi.com/lroc/rdr_product_select)
2. [HiRISE digital terrain models](https://hirise-pds.lpl.arizona.edu/PDS/DTM/)
3. [Opportunity’s last stop: HiRISE DTEEC_018701_1775_018846_1775](https://hirise-pds.lpl.arizona.edu/PDS/DTM/ESP/ORB_018700_018799/ESP_018701_1775_ESP_018846_1775/DTEEC_018701_1775_018846_1775_U01.IMG)
4. [PIA07882: Spirit’s true-colour panorama (ground colour, daytime sky)](https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA07882)
5. [PIA19400: Curiosity’s sunset in Gale crater](https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA19400)
6. [PIA25179: Perseverance films Phobos crossing the Sun](https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA25179)
7. [Mars24 Sunclock (Allison and McEwen)](https://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/mars24/)
8. [Archinal et al. 2018, IAU WGCCRE report on rotational elements](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10569-017-9805-5)
9. [Anglada-Escudé et al. 2016, a terrestrial planet round Proxima Centauri](https://doi.org/10.1038/nature19106)
10. [Gillon et al. 2017, seven temperate planets round TRAPPIST-1](https://doi.org/10.1038/nature21360)
11. [NASA Solar System Treks (lunar and Martian mosaics)](https://trek.nasa.gov/)