Mars Atlas

Cities, main roads and secondary roads of a colonised Mars, drawn over the real relief of the planet. Search a place, ask for directions or click anywhere to read its elevation and air pressure.

The story of the map How to use it

Mars, year 100: the planet has roads

Close your eyes and stand in the year 100 of the Martian calendar, around 2141 on Earth. A whole century of Martian years has passed since the first boots pressed the regolith, and nobody crosses Mars cross-country any more. There are main roads. Long, patient ribbons of road that leave the great cities, climb the shoulders of the volcanoes, slip along the walls of the canyons and cross plains so wide that the horizon is a rumour. This is the map of that Mars.

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A planet you can drive across

Think about what a road means. A road says someone is coming back. It says there is a reason to go from here to there and a reason to return: ice at one end, a lab at the other, a spaceport, a family. In the year 100 there are thirteen main roads and twelve secondary roads, about 66,000 kilometres of them, joining thirty-one settlements and about a million people, with three ports for the voyage to and from Earth and a network of shuttle ports between the cities across eleven regions. Trans-Acidalia Road runs from the plains of Arcadia to Chryse; the Canyon Corridor follows Valles Marineris and its drainage towards the east; the Utopia-Arcadia Road crosses a third of the planet in a single line. And in Airy-0 crater, a few hundred kilometres from Meridiani Gateway, a monument marks the prime meridian of Mars: the Greenwich of the Red Planet.

Drawn on the real planet

Here is the part that makes it hard to dismiss: none of this is drawn on an imaginary world. Every road in this atlas sits on the real relief of Mars, measured by the laser altimeter of the Mars Global Surveyor probe. Settlements stand on flat ground; roads follow the gentlest path between them, with no slope above a few per cent, because a loaded convoy does not care how pretty a cliff is. Click any point and you will read the real elevation and the real air pressure there: between 4 and 12 millibars, which is why every vehicle on this map is pressurised.

A map that wants to be used

Nobody has built these roads yet. But this is how roads get built: someone draws the line, someone else checks the slope, a third person asks how long it would take. So take it seriously. Pick two cities and ask the map how to get from one to the other. Choose the shortest way or the gentlest one. Watch the elevation profile climb a volcano flank. Switch to the satellite view and find the exact crater your route passes. Drive the trip in fast-forward and see how many sols it takes.

Mars will be like this. Not exactly like this, perhaps, but close enough that one day someone will stop at a junction on a plain in Arcadia, check this very route and say: it was already here. Start in a city. Go anywhere.

How to use the map

Move around

Drag to pan and use the wheel or pinch to zoom. The map has no edge: keep going east or west and you will circle the planet, with the roads, cities and routes repeating on every lap.

Search

The bar at the top finds cities, roads (try R1 or S2), regions and landmarks such as Olympus Mons. Press Enter to jump to the first result.

Click anywhere

Click a city, a road or any bare patch of ground. You get its elevation, air pressure, local slope, region, the roads that reach it and the nearest settlements.

Directions

The diamond button next to the search bar opens the route planner. Type an origin and a destination, or click them on the map; add a stop if you want one; pick a vehicle (35, 60 or 90 km/h). You get the shortest and the gentlest route, step by step, with a travel time that slows down on slopes.

Elevation profile

Under every route or road you will find its profile. Move the mouse along it and a dot travels the map showing where you are, with the elevation, pressure and slope at that point. The Simulate trip button does the drive for you.

Layers and base maps

The layers button (top right) switches between road map, Viking satellite, detailed satellite (THEMIS 100 m) and colour relief, and shows or hides main roads, secondary roads, cities, nodes, regions and landmarks. It also draws the contour line of any single elevation you choose (0, 10000…).

Reading the map

Orange roads with a dark edge are main roads (R); cream ones are secondary roads (S); a star is a regional capital, a white dot a settlement and a red-ringed dot a junction. Dashed white lines are region limits.

Copy link keeps your route, stop, vehicle and view in the address, so you can send the exact trip to anyone.

Spaceports

Mars has three ports for the voyage to and from Earth, and a network of suborbital shuttle ports that link the cities in under two hours. The Earth–Mars transfer window opens about every 26 months and the voyage lasts six to nine months, so these ports have intense seasons of arrivals and departures.

The regions of Mars

Cities and settlements

Name	Type	Region	Elevation	Pressure	Population

Roads and highways

Code	Name	Length	Connects

Fictional network drawn over real Martian geography: coordinates are a projection of where it could be built. Pressure is estimated from elevation (6.11 mbar at the 0 m datum, scale height 10.9 km). Travel times slow down on slopes.