Article content

VANCOUVER — One of the most Mars-like environments on Earth, Devon Island in the Canadian High Arctic, is now on the map and can be explored on Google Street View.

This largest uninhabited island on Earth is a rocky polar desert that has a surface and conditions similar to the red planet, said Pascal Lee, chairman of the Mars Institute and director of the Haughton-Mars Project, a field research project on Devon Island that’s funded by NASA.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Nunavut's Devon Island, described as 'Mars on Earth,' is now in Google Street View Back to video

“There are not many places like this,” Lee said of the island roughly the size of Nova Scotia in Baffin Bay, Nunavut.

“It’s the biggest stretch of terrain that is barren, rocky and cold and dry … So right there it’s a big piece of real estate that has similar climate to Mars.”

Since 1997, the remote land mass has been the site of field deployments by scientists and astronauts looking to learn more about the moon and Mars.

Last summer, Lee and a team of researchers set out to generate a panorama of some of the sites most frequented by scientists. They used GoPro cameras to get 360-degree “photo spheres” and smartphones to capture video footage.