My Google Map Blog

A joint mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) is expected to land a probe on Mars today October 19th, 2016. If successful, it will be the first successful landing on Mars that was not by NASA. Many attempts have been made by various countries and there have been a number of successful orbiters and flybys. For a full list of Mars missions see this Wikipedia page.

The mission named ExoMars includes an orbiter, the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter and a lander named Schiaparelli. Read more about it here.

You can watch the event live here. See here for more details on the broadcast schedule.

We used the details in this video to identify the landing area in Google Earth. You can use this KML file to view it in Google Earth. This is hand drawn based on the video and is not an official outline.

Schiaparelli’s landing zone as seen in Google Earth.

The landing zone includes the current location of NASA’s Opportunity rover.

[ Update: Also see this KML file with more detailed landing ellipses kindly provided by GEB reader Fernando Nogal. See this thread for more details. ]

The post Europe and Russia attempting Mars landing appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

We recently came across a post by Janis Petke who has created some beautiful pictures using Google Earth, PTGui panorama software and Photoshop.

Barcelona, Spain. ‘Little Planet’ view by Janis Petke. 3D imagery from Google Earth.

See all the images and a description of how it was done here.

Janis is not the first person to do this, and we also found this album, for example.

To learn how to make ‘Little Planets’ from panoramas see here.

If you make your own images, be sure to give proper attribution to Google Earth and if your images include imagery or mapping data from third parties, those must be attributed too. For guidelines on what you may or may not do with Google Earth imagery see these guidelines.

This reminded us of our post on changing the Field of View in Google Earth but sadly we were not able to find a way to get the full ‘Little Planet’ effect directly in Google Earth.

The post ‘Little Planets’ – Fisheye art from Google Earth imagery appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

Last week Hurricane Matthews caused widespread devastation, crossing over Haiti, the Bahamas and then up the east coast of the United States. It caused direct damage from the high winds and waves, followed by severe flooding in the US, which is still ongoing. We have been impressed by the amount of imagery that has been made available. Planet Labs supplied imagery of Haiti from before the disaster to help emergency response teams. Then DigitalGlobe and Terra Bella provided imagery of Haiti, the Bahamas and the US from after the event via Google Crisis Response. And finally, NOAA has been supplying aerial imagery of the US coast and the inland flooding as the floods have progressed. You can see the satellite imagery in Google Earth with this KML file from Google Crisis Response and the NOAA aerial imagery with this KML file that we created.

As of this writing, fresh imagery continues to be added to both sets every day:

Les Irois, Haiti.

Greenville, North Carolina. October 15th, 2016. (NOAA imagery)

Kinston, North Carolina. October 15th, 2016. (NOAA imagery)

There have been several other natural disasters this year that had similarly fast responses with imagery.

In April this year, Kumamoto, Japan, experienced a series of large earthquakes. Google managed to capture aerial imagery the day after the first shock and again on the following day after subsequent, more powerful shocks. Whether Google had already been planning to capture imagery there we do not know. Google has since also updated the 3D imagery of Kumamoto.

In August this year, there was a large earthquake in central Italy. We saw some low resolution satellite imagery from Terra Bella, but there was also comprehensive aerial imagery captured almost immediately after the event organised by the Copernicus Emergency Management Service, although sadly that imagery was not made available in Google Earth.

In general, it seems like coverage of natural disasters has been improving. We believe this is due to a several factors:
– There are more satellite imaging companies, with more satellites than ever before.
– There are a number of emergency response programmes that have been getting better and better at obtaining and disseminating imagery, some of which are listed below:

• Google Crisis Response
• DigitalGlobe’s FirstLook program
• Copernicus Emergency Management Service
• USGS Emergency Response
  • The better coverage may also reflect an increased tendency to share the imagery with the general public rather than restricting it to emergency response agencies.

The post Acquisition of imagery after natural disasters improving appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

Yesterday we talked about how the NOAA aerial imagery of the eastern US coast in the wake of Hurricane Matthew is available as map tiles. We investigated how to display map tiles in Google Earth and concluded that doing it with a single KMZ file would not be feasible. We also said it wouldn’t be worth setting up a server to serve the necessary KML files, but after some consideration we decided to give it a go.

Rather than generating the hundreds of thousands of KML files necessary to make it work, we realised that we could simply generate KML files dynamically as they are requested. It actually worked a lot better than we expected. We implemented it in JavaScript, initially testing it out with a local instance of Node.js running on a PC which worked very well. We then put the code on a Node.js server running in the cloud (Openshift) and it still works remarkably well.

So, to view the NOAA imagery in Google Earth, simply download this KML file. You should immediately be able to see the thin strip of imagery along the eastern coast of the US. Also note that there are a number of new patches of aerial imagery inland.

As you zoom in, it automatically loads higher resolution imagery almost as seamlessly as native Google Earth imagery. The imagery is arranged in separate layers for batches of imagery captured on different dates. Occasionally there is a problem with layers overlapping, in which case you may see grey squares mixed in with imagery. If you experience this, try turning off some of the layers until you identify which layer has the grey squares, then keep that particular layer off while viewing that location. There are also some locations such as Rocky Mount, North Carolina for example, with multiple sets of imagery captured on different days, so again, try turning off some layers to see the different sets.

The flooding is still ongoing at the time of writing, and NOAA is adding new imagery over time. We will try to keep the server up-to-date over the next few days, so try refreshing the main network-link to see if there are new layers.

Nichols, South Carolina.

Boardman, North Carolina.

Near Galivants Ferry, South Carolina.

A flooded water treatment plant near Smithfield, North Carolina.

Rocky Mount, North Carolina.

Goldsboro, Georgia.

This is just an experiment to learn about the best way to access map tiles in Google Earth. We make no guarantees about how long we will keep the server running.

If you know of any other maps available as map tiles that do not have restrictive licence agreements, let us know in the comments.

The post NOAA post Hurricane Matthew imagery in Google Earth appeared first on Google Earth Blog.