Desktop Exploration of Remote Terrain (DERT) is a software tool for exploring large Digital Terrain Models (DTM) in 3D. It aids in understanding topography and spatial relationships of terrain features, as well as performing simple analysis tasks relevant to the planetary science community.
DERT was developed by the Autonomous Systems and Robotics Area of the Intelligent Systems Division at NASA Ames Research Center. It leverages techniques implemented for science planning support applications provided to a number of NASA missions including Phoenix Mars Lander (PML) and Mars Science Laboratory (MSL).
DERT was funded by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) mission and developed in collaboration with members of the MRO Context Camera (CTX) science team. DERT is licensed under the NASA Open Source Agreement (NOSA).
See demonstrations of DERT here.
Prebuilt releases are available on the releases tab for this site. Additionally, versions that include the JPL SPICE kernels as well as some prebuilt landscapes are available here. These releases are built with the Java 1.8 JDK so the corresponding JRE is required to run them.
We are not adding contributors at this time. However, we welcome your feedback. Please let us know of any issues you find by submitting them to this site.
DERT is a viewer for digital terrain models created from data collected during NASA missions.
DERT is released under the NASA Open Source Agreement (NOSA) found in the “LICENSE” folder where you downloaded DERT.
DERT includes 3rd Party software. The complete copyright notice listing for DERT is:
Copyright © 2015 United States Government as represented by the Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. No copyright is claimed in the United States under Title 17, U.S.Code. All Other Rights Reserved.
Desktop Exploration of Remote Terrain (DERT) was written with the aid of a number of free, open source libraries. These libraries and their notices are listed below. Find the complete third party license listings in the separate “DERT Third Party Licenses” pdf document found where you downloaded DERT in the LICENSE folder.
JogAmp Ardor3D Continuation, Copyright © 2008-2012 Ardor Labs, Inc.
JOGL, Copyright 2010 JogAmp Community. All rights reserved.
JOGL Portions Sun Microsystems, Copyright © 2003-2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
JOGL Portions Silicon Graphics, Copyright © 1991-2000 Silicon Graphics, Inc.
Light Weight Java Gaming Library Project (LWJGL), Copyright © 2002-2004 LWJGL Project All rights reserved.
Tile Rendering Library - Brain Paul, Copyright © 1997-2005 Brian Paul. All Rights Reserved.
OpenKODE, EGL, OpenGL, OpenGL ES1 & ES2, Copyright © 2007-2010 The Khronos Group Inc.
Cg, Copyright © 2002, NVIDIA Corporation.
Typecast - David Schweinsberg, Copyright © 1999-2003 The Apache Software Foundation. All rights reserved.
PNGJ - Herman J. Gonzalez and Shawn Hartsock, Copyright © 2004 The Apache Software Foundation. All rights reserved.
Apache Harmony - Open Source Java SE, Copyright © 2006, 2010 The Apache Software Foundation.
GlueGen, Copyright © 2010 JogAmp Community. All rights reserved.
GlueGen Portions - Sun Microsystems, Copyright © 2003-2005 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Guava, Copyright © 2010 The Guava Authors.
XStream, Copyright © 2003-2006, Joe Walnes, Copyright © 2006-2009, 2011 XStream Committers. All rights reserved.
SPICE, Copyright © 2003, California Institute of Technology. U.S. Government sponsorship acknowledged.
LibTIFF, Copyright © 1988-1997 Sam Leffler, Copyright © 1991-1997 Silicon Graphics, Inc.
PROJ.4, Copyright © 2000, Frank Warmerdam.
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