Mars Trek has interactive maps, which include the ability to overlay a range of data sets generated from instruments aboard spacecraft orbiting Mars, and analysis tools for measuring surface features.

Standard keyboard gaming controls are used to manoeuvre the users across Mars' surface, and 3-D printer-exportable topography allows users to print physical models of surface features.

Mars Trek was developed by NASA's Lunar Mapping and Modeling Project, which provides mission planners, lunar scientists and the public with analysis and data visualisation tools for our Moon.

Experience Curiosity also uses real science data to create a realistic and game-ready rover model based entirely on real mechanisms and executed commands. Users can manipulate

the rover's tools and view Mars through each of its cameras.

"We've done a lot of heavy 3-D processing to make experience Curiosity work in a browser. Anybody with access to the web can take a journey to Mars," said Kevin Hussey, manager of the Visualisation Applications and Development group at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, which manages and operates the Curiosity rover.

Curiosity's adventures on the red planet began on August 6, 2012, when a landing technique called the sky-crane manoeuvre deposited the rover in the 154-kilometre-wide Gale Crater.

"At three years old, Curiosity already has had a rich and fascinating life. This new programme lets the public experience some of the rover's adventures first-hand," said Jim Erickson, the project manager for the mission at JPL