Eyes on the Solar System

Eyes on the Solar System (EotSS) is computer simulation software created by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to present realistic simulated views of spacecraft, planets and other features within the Solar System. Position and orientation of spacecraft and planets represented in the software are based on real data from JPL. EotSS was released in 2010 and originally required download of plugin for rendering. As of mid-2012, EotSS is Java based and is cross browser and cross platform compatible.

Eyes on the Solar System received its heaviest use during the entry, descent and landing of the Mars Science Laboratory. The landing of MSL brought an additional 739,000 visits and 20 terabytes of data was streamed from JPL servers that weekend in support of the software. Touchdown time of the rover in the software was predicted by team planning spacecraft trajectory weeks ahead but was accurate within a fraction of a second.