WASHINGTON: On the third anniversary of the Mars landing of Curiosity rover, NASA has unveiled two online tools that provide detailed visualisations of the red planet and allow netizens to journey along with the rover on its Martian expeditions.

NASA hopes the new online tools will open the mysterious terrain of the red planet to a new generation of explorers.

Mars Trek is a free, web-based application that provides high-quality, detailed visualisations of the planet using real data from 50 years of NASA exploration and allowing astronomers, citizen scientists and students to study the red planet's features.

Experience Curiosity allows viewers to journey along with the one-tonne rover on its Martian expeditions. The programme simulates Mars in 3-D based on actual data from Curiosity and NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), giving users first-hand experience in a day in the life of a Mars rover.

A NASA team is already using Mars Trek to aid in the selection of possible landing sites for the agency's Mars 2020 rover, and the application will be used as part of NASA's newly announced process to examine and select candidate sites for the first human exploration mission to Mars in the 2030s.

"This tool has opened my eyes as to how we should first approach roaming on another world, and now the public can join in on the fun," said Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division in Washington.

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