You can explore the Martian surface as these ways:

- hold down your left mouse button, and drag it around the orb to view it from any angle.

- hold down your right mouse button, then drag the mouse down, over the orb to enlarge it or up to make it smaller.

- hold down both buttons and drag the orb around the sky.

The white area on top is the north polar cap. Look at how much smaller the south polar cap is!

To produce this animation, a cylindrical projection image of Mars was laid over a sphere using 3D Studio Max. The image was then exported to Cult3d, where the interactivity was added.