From ancient mythologies to modern media, Mars has captured our imagination for thousands of years.

Mars is Questacon’s new out-of-this-world immersive gallery experience. Gaze at Questacon’s 7-metre Mars globe and discover the strangely familiar landscape of this foreign world. Mars will bring you up close and personal with the red surface of Mars, which is home to the Solar System’s largest canyon and tallest volcano. Featuring a 14-metre-wide high-resolution panorama of the Martian surface as seen by NASA’s Curiosity Rover, Mars lets you imagine what it would be like to set foot on another world.

Unique in the Southern Hemisphere, Questacon’s Mars globe was created by artist Luke Jerram using data from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Today Mars is a cold, dry desert. But missions to the planet have discovered that it was once much more like our own warm, wet Earth. Could we find evidence that life once existed on Mars?

With new and more ambitious international missions launching in 2020 and beyond, humans will delve ever deeper in the mysteries of Mars. The more we learn about Mars, the more we learn about ourselves and our own tiny place in the universe.

Useful links

Mars exploration tools

• Access Mars Web VR - web based virtual reality exploration
• Google Mars - interactive map of the martian surface
• NASA Mars Missions - info about NASA’s exploration of Mars and upcoming launches
• Interactive Mars Landing Map - interactive Wikipedia map showing locations of Mars landers and rovers

Space travel resources

• Stellarium - explore constellations from Australian Indigenous astronomy
• Open rocket - design and simulate your rockets before you build and launch them
• Orbiter - A simulator that gives you an idea what space flight really feels like
• SpaceEngine - a realistic virtual Universe you can explore on your computer
• Hubble Spacecraft - visit Hubble in orbit with a 360-degree tour
• Citizen Science Projects - take part in space science research on the Australian Square Kilometre Array website

Earth based missions

• Sky Map - a virtual reality star map for Android devices
• Online telescopes - access and control online telescopes. iTelescope or World Wide Telescope
• Build your own - Cheops spacecraft
• Build your own - Ingenuity helicopter
• Questacon at home - fun experiments to try at home
• Square Kilometre Array Activities - check out augmented reality, virtual reality and other fun stuff