Press kit
Facts, images and contact for Trawers, a free 3D browser game that lets anyone drive a rover across the real Mars at real scale. Launch on 4 November 2026.
In one sentence
Trawers is a free 3D browser game that lets anyone drive a rover across the real Mars at real scale, where a lap of the planet takes more than a year of real time.
Press release
A Polish researcher puts the whole real Mars in your browser, and nobody has driven around it yet
4 November 2026. Trawers, a free browser game launched today at trawers.space, lets players land at the real sites of Mars missions and drive a rover across the planet at true scale. The map is built from publicly available orbital imagery and elevation data, and real rover routes and panoramas are placed where they were recorded.
The game rover drives at 9 km/h, about sixty times faster than NASA's Perseverance, but every kilometre is a real Martian kilometre. A full lap of the equator, about 21,300 km, would take a dedicated player more than a year of real time. The rover keeps driving even when the browser is closed.
"I wanted something real that is practically impossible to finish," says Jakub Kol, the creator of Trawers. "Photos from orbit make Mars look small. When you drive it kilometre by kilometre, you finally feel how big it is."
Players can switch between the rover, an astronaut on foot and a shuttle, explore 100 × 100 m squares, chase achievements and climb a global leaderboard of the longest distance driven. A live counter at trawers.space/stats shows how far all players have driven together.
The game is free and runs in any modern browser without installation. It is free for schools and educators. Players who want to can adopt a symbolic 100 × 100 m parcel of Jezero Crater, where Perseverance landed, from 1 USD, or become the patron of one of the planet's 14,374 territories of about 100 × 100 km, from 29 USD; the money covers hosting and development. Trawers is an independent project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by NASA.
Key facts
- Name: Trawers. Web: trawers.space. Launch: 4 November 2026.
- Price: free; optional symbolic parcels in Jezero (1–3 USD), territory patronage (from 29 USD) and Ko-fi support.
- Platform: any modern web browser with WebGL; desktop, tablet and phone. Language: English.
- Creator: Jakub Kol, researcher and university lecturer, Poland.
- Scale: real Mars, about 144 million km² of surface; equator about 21,300 km.
- Data: Viking global mosaics, MOLA elevation, THEMIS, CTX and HiRISE imagery and terrain models, real rover traverses and panoramas from public sources.
- Landing sites: Jezero (Perseverance), Gale (Curiosity), Meridiani (Opportunity), Gusev (Spirit), Ares Vallis (Pathfinder), Chryse (Viking 1), Utopia (Viking 2), Elysium (InSight), Vastitas Borealis (Phoenix).
Images
Free to use in coverage about Trawers, with credit "Trawers / trawers.space". The underlying Mars imagery is NASA/JPL/USGS public data.
Story angles
- Mars at true scale. Why nobody has driven around the planet yet, and what the live counter says.
- Faster than Perseverance, still not fast enough. Real distances vs a 9 km/h game rover.
- A one-person space project from Poland, built on open NASA data.
- Mars in the classroom. A free real-scale model for teaching scale and maps.
About the creator
Jakub Kol is a Polish researcher and university lecturer specialising in new technologies and cybersecurity, and the creator of TRAWERS.SPACE.
He works at the University of Economics in Katowice, where he teaches and does research on the digital economy. His research focuses on models of digital culture consumption: how people today take part in digital forms of culture, education and communication. He combines a social-science perspective with hands-on knowledge of information technology, studying the changing relationship between people, technology and the digital environment. He is also interested in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, digital transformation and new educational tools.
TRAWERS.SPACE uses real scientific data, 3D terrain models and an interactive digital environment to let anyone explore the surface of the Red Planet on their own. It brings together science outreach and new forms of digital participation, showing how immersive technology can support education and spark interest in science, with the ambition of reaching an international audience.
Contact
Jakub Kol, creator of Trawers: [email protected] · Instagram @jakolsky