QGIS OR MGIS? TIME TO LOOK BEYOND EARTH…
If you were wondering what QGIS stands for, the Q is for Quantum – or at least it was until 2013 but we guess now Q just means Q – and the G stands for Geographic which includes the “geo” suffix that relates to the Earth. As we proved in our experiments, though, it might be equally appropriate to call it QMIS, since we used it to display Martian data. Indeed, such systems have been used with data representing a wide range of non-terrestrial astronomical objects.
Interested in the wider Solar System? Then you’ll probably want to investigate the various planetary base maps and digital elevation models that are freely available. However, you’re going to need to delve into the subjects of CRSs – that’s coordinate reference systems – although it’s a subject you really need to be familiar with whatever your use of QGIS. Needless to say, data representing anywhere other than the Earth won’t use any of the CRSs devised for terrestrial use. And we have to admit that we struggled with one particular Martian base map which loaded, but wouldn’t display. However, we did do better with elevation data so that might be a good place to start. Search for “Mars_MGS_ MOLA_DEM_mosaic_global_463m” and you’ll find that it can be downloaded from https://astrogeology.usgs.gov. And if the moon is your thing, you might be interested in https://lunaserv.lroc.asu. edu, which hosts data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera and provides information on how to use it in QGIS.