The road ahead

Roadmap

Earth–Mars distance over the next two years — computed live in your browser by the same engine that draws the deck. Near is a crest.

Mars Deck is a live map of the solar system that computes every position on your own device rather than fetching it from anyone. This is what we are building next.

The only dates on this page are the ones the solar system sets. Those cannot slip, so we are happy to print them. Our own features are ordered, not dated — and the order can change. If you have paid for a Founding place, you have paid for what the deck does today, and everything below is what we intend to add to it.

Fixed points

Every date here is solved from orbital mechanics by our own engine, not looked up. You can check them against any ephemeris you like — that is rather the point.

24 Sep 2026 The transfer window opens The first departure date under our stated C3 ceiling of 20 km²/s²

30 Oct 2026 Optimal departure — C3 9.1, a 295-day cruise The cheapest way there. Leaves 112 days before opposition, because you aim where Mars will be

20 Feb 2027 Mars at its closest — 0.678 AU Light-time falls to about 5½ minutes each way. The best sky of the decade for a small telescope

05 Mar 2027 The window closes After this the energy cost climbs past our ceiling and stays there for about two years

21 Aug 2027 Arrival, for anything that left on the optimal date Our engine closes this 295-day transfer to within 1.5 metres

Nobody is flying to Mars in this window. In February 2026 SpaceX moved its Mars effort behind an uncrewed lunar landing targeted for March 2027, and put a Mars city five to seven years out. The five uncrewed Starships once planned for this window are not the near-term priority.

The window opens anyway. It is a fact about two orbits, not about anyone's schedule — which is exactly why this deck computes it instead of reporting it.

What we are building

Running now

Shipped

On the deck today. Nothing here is a promise.

The solar deck — 8 planets, 9 dwarf planets, 6,200 real JPL small bodies and 5 interstellar probes, all propagated in your browser.
The transfer-window solver — a real Lambert porkchop scan, not a lookup table.
Sky view — where everything is above your horizon right now, with the real Moon phase and the true day/night terminator.
Ask the Deck — ask a question, get an answer built from our computed figures, and the camera flies there.
Watchlists — follow anything, see its next event on a twelve-month horizon, export the dates to your calendar.

Next, before the window opens

Building

Started, and everything here works with no outside data at all.

Landing sites and rover positions — every place we have put something down, plotted where it actually is. Fixed coordinates, so this can never go stale or depend on anyone's server staying up.
Planet close-ups — fly past the deck view into a single body. Earth first: spinning, with the real terminator. Half of this already exists in the sky renderer.
Points of interest — Olympus Mons, Valles Marineris, the poles, and the places the missions are aimed at.

After the window opens

Exploring

Wanted, sketched, not started. Order and shape may change.

Mars, mapped properly — the surface, the missions on it, and the terrain in the deck's own visual language. The big one.
Space weather — flares, X-ray flux, sunspots and the aurora forecast, from NOAA's public feed. Sun content and Earth content at once, and the thing that actually knocks satellites about.
Surface conditions on Mars — temperature and pressure from the rovers. These feeds lag and sometimes stop; where a reading is old the deck will say so rather than quietly show it.
Imagery — real mission photography against the map. Only where it does not cost the thing that makes this deck worth using, which is that it opens instantly and works offline.
Event alerts — told in advance when something you follow is about to do something. Needs infrastructure we have deliberately not built yet.

One rule sits above all of it. The deck stays computed and works with no network. Anything that needs someone else's data lives beside the map, never inside it, and caches to a file we serve ourselves — so a dead feed can grey out a panel and can never break the map.

Where to follow it

Work gets posted as it ships. News from the deck carries the longer notes; the feed is there if you would rather not rely on anyone's timeline.

If you want to back it, a Founding place is a one-off that keeps the map free for everyone else. It buys what the deck does today — read the list above as intent, not as a contract.