PRo3D supports planetary researchers on NASA and ESA missions to find signs of life on the red planet by examining high-resolution 3D surface reconstructions from orbiter and rover cameras. PRo3D is part of the current NASA Mars mission. Over the last 5 years, the development of PRo3D has been aimed at providing planetary geologists with interactive tools to digitize geological features on digital exposure models (DOMs) on the surface of Mars. During our successful collaboration with the Imperial College of London, PRo3D has proved to be the researchers' main tool for conducting remote geological analyses, leading to many publications and lectures in various places of geological science.
Planetary geology is the most promoted use case of PRo3D, but we are trying to extend our user groups to other use cases, so we have also developed features to support scientific objectives in landing site selection and mission planning.
3D Layers
Planetary Science
Large amounts of data
Geological Annotation
PRo3D lets users pick points on the 3D surface at the full resolution of the data present. Our tools contain point, line, and polyline annotations, while line segments are projected onto the surface. Various measurements are computed at the highest possible accuracy, such as the distance along a 3D surface (waylength) or dip-and-strike orientations of sediment structures.
Surface reconstructions from high-resolution satellite images can easily yield gigabytes of data in terms of geometry, imagery, and additional layers. With PRo3D users can explore huge datasets interactively and even perform measurements of topographic features. The displayed dataset on the right consists of 2GB of raw 3D position vectors, a 1GB elevation map, and 10GB of image data rendered at interactive framerates with commodity hardware, utilizing adjustable level-of-detail and out-of-core techniques.
Although, PRo3D is not a GIS system, we need to provide our users with typical GIS features to solve their geospatial problems, such as evaluating topographic or geological features. Our 3D layering technique allows a seamless integration of different reconstructions present at a single location. Unlike image or DTM layering we allow users to blend full 3D data by assigning rendering priorities, which is crucial to explore reconstructions from multiple rover camera instruments.
The Mastcam-Z team's first 3D video flyover of the Martian surface. The video shows the immediate environment of NASA's Perseverance rover, compiled from Mastcam-Z flight stereo images.
PRo3D is available for download at pro3d.space including reconstructions of the Martian surface to try out. PRo3D is also available in open-source form on Github. For academic or commercial inquiries please contact science(at)vrvis.at.
Visual Analysis of Asteroid Deflection.
MINERVA is an integrated framework for planetary scientists allowing members of different instrument teams to cooperate synergistically in virtual workspaces by sharing observations, analyses and annotations of heterogonous mission data.
The "Mars-DL" project is investigating how a deep learning system can support the research work of planetary scientists through object and pattern recognition. For this project VRVis has extended the functionality of PRo3D to automatically render shatter cone training images.
Virtual exploration and geological analysis of reconstructed Mars surfaces and rock outcrops.
Support for planetary research: Visual analysis of reconstructions of the Mars surface and view planning for rover camera instruments.