NASA's ace 3D space exploration tool Eyes on the Solar system now works in browser

It's a common dream among our terrestrial species to one day explore the stars. Some of us have grown up with boots on the moon long in our history and boots on Mars planned for 2040, causing us to look forward to a plausible future of space exploration. Sadly, it's coming along a bit slower than my dreams were hoping for, but NASA is still helping our stranded little species get a taste of space with things like these amazing photographs and 3D solar system renderings.

Back in 2010 NASA released a free software suite called NASA's Eyes Visualisation. It's an incredibly interesting tool that realistically simulates spacecraft, planets, and other items in our solar system based on real data. Just a few days ago the company released NASA's Eyes in browser format (spotted by HotHardware), so anyone with a computer can check out some of the happenings in our local system.

Jumping onto the new NASA's Eyes website will give you a 3D rendering of our system live, or you can play around with the controls to move time to your whim. Clicking on objects will give you more information about them, and you can move around them and zoom in and out fairly freely. Some objects' surfaces can even have high-res textures turned on to boot. It takes me back to mining resources in Mass Effect, but hopefully without the mining part.

There are still other seriously cool features in this web browsing look at the solar system, too. It has a telescope mode that allows you to land on a planet and see the night's sky from that perspective. It's the closest I've ever come to pulling a Dr Manhattan and just chilling out on Mars while the world spins on without me.

Your next machine

(Image credit: Future)

Best gaming PC: The top pre-built machines from the pros
Best gaming laptop: Perfect notebooks for mobile gaming

For the NASA nerds among us, the Eye also shows off stories on the left hand side of the screen. These take you through various exploration missions in 3D, explaining what was found and how by the various instruments sent out into the void. 

You can get a look at what Voyager twins have been up to, watch the Perseverance Mars landing, and even see geysers get discovered on one of Saturn's moons.

Spoilers, it's probably not the one you think.

All of this gives space fans the world over a great 3D exploration app in any browser they can access. This is one great little tool that's great for learning tonnes of information about NASA missions, our solar system, the different planets and moons, or just mindlessly exploring space from the comfort of your PC.

Hope Corrigan
Hardware Writer

Hope’s been writing about games for about a decade, starting out way back when on the Australian Nintendo fan site Vooks.net. Since then, she’s talked far too much about games and tech for publications such as Techlife, Byteside, IGN, and GameSpot. Of course there’s also here at PC Gamer, where she gets to indulge her inner hardware nerd with news and reviews. You can usually find Hope fawning over some art, tech, or likely a wonderful combination of them both and where relevant she’ll share them with you here. When she’s not writing about the amazing creations of others, she’s working on what she hopes will one day be her own. You can find her fictional chill out ambient far future sci-fi radio show/album/listening experience podcast right here. No, she’s not kidding. 

Read more
Best space games on PC
The best space games on PC
An artist’s illustration of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope revealing, in the infrared, a population of small main-belt asteroids.
GPUs powering AI will probably be the end of us all but at least they're being used to find small city smashing asteroids before they do
An asteroid mining operation
Exploit asteroids for resources using automated mining equipment as they hurtle through your space-claim in Astronomics
A spacecraft flying near the sun in Elite: Dangerous
Elite Dangerous just implemented an entire system colonisation mechanic, in case you really want to get off this planet
Astronaut on alien planet
A recently launched and now terminally sideways Moon lander contains Imagine Dragon's Starfield song, which seems eerily fitting
A planet with trees and rocks
Black holes, buildings on poles, and a 'sea urchin planet': PUBG creator's world-sized tech demo may be hiding some bizarre machine learning 'hallucinations'
Latest in Software
Microsoft's iconic Bliss wallpaper
From pixels to pinot: The Windows XP 'Bliss' wallpaper hill was real and this is what it looks like now
Napster client circa 1999
Former music-pirating platform Napster to be reborn rather ironically as a metaverse for musicians to connect with their fans after $207 million deal
New Discord desktop client themes.
Discord drops big update with 'completely new' in-game overlay and new dark themes for the desktop client
Image for
'No real human would go four links deep into a maze of AI-generated nonsense': Cloudflare's AI Labyrinth uses decoy pages to trap web-crawling bots and feed them slop 'as a defensive weapon'
A screenshot from game Mudborne of a little humanoid frog in a marsh
Five new Steam games you probably missed (March 24, 2025)
CHINA - 2025/02/11: In this photo illustration, a Roblox logo is seen displayed on the screen of a smartphone. (Photo Illustration by Sheldon Cooper/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
'Humans still surpass machines': Roblox has been using a machine learning voice chat moderation system for a year, but in some cases you just can't beat real people
Latest in News
Monster Hunter Wilds' stockpile master studying a manifest
As layoffs and studio closures continue to deathroll the western AAA industry, analyst points out 5 of 8 major Japanese companies hit all-time share prices this year
A woman wearing a VR headset with dramatic, colourful lighting across the background
'World’s smallest LEDs' could lead to accurately lit screens with 127,000 pixels per inch and much more immersive VR
The NES themed 8BitDo Retro mechanical gaming keyboard on a blue background
I love the 8BitDo Retro C64 keyboard but I'd pick its cheaper NES-themed model near its lowest price ever during Amazon's Big Spring Sale
gta 6 trailer
Publishers 'don't want to be anywhere near' Grand Theft Auto 6 when it launches: 'It's proving to be very stressful'
Microsoft's iconic Bliss wallpaper
From pixels to pinot: The Windows XP 'Bliss' wallpaper hill was real and this is what it looks like now
A female Zoi making two hearts with her fingers.
Following 24 hours of Denuvo-based backlash, Inzoi is taking a surprising step and removing it entirely: 'We want to sincerely apologise for not aligning more closely with player expectations'