Country Size on Other Planets
Mars has almost exactly as much surface as all of Earth's land, and the Moon has about a quarter of it. So a country that looks modest on a globe becomes a continent on the Moon: Australia would cover a fifth of it. Spin the true globe, grab any outline, and set it down on another world at honest scale.
10⁸ m · 139,820 km (Jupiter) · D3 · TopoJSON · Canvas
Keep exploring the scale
Every toy changes one assumption. Try another and see what moves.
A globe first, then the solar system
What a country covers on Mars, the Moon, and Jupiter
Earth’s land adds up to about 149 million km². Mars, with no oceans, has about 145 million km² of surface, so every country covers nearly the same share of Mars as it does of Earth’s dry land. The Moon has only about 38 million km², a quarter as much, which turns mid-sized countries into continents. Jupiter has no solid surface at all; its cloud-top sphere is about 61 billion km², so even Russia becomes a speck.
Three worked examples
- Russia, 17.1 million km², would wrap around roughly 45 percent of the Moon and about 12 percent of Mars.
- India, 3.29 million km², would cover about 2.3 percent of Mars, the same share it has of Earth’s land.
- Greenland, 2.17 million km², would take about 3 percent of Mercury’s 75 million km² surface.
How the tool rescales an outline
Each outline keeps its area in square kilometres and is redrawn against the target world’s diameter. Mars is 6,779 km across, about 0.53 of Earth’s 12,742 km, so an outline appears about 1.9 times wider on Mars. The Moon, at 3,474 km, makes it 3.7 times wider. Jupiter, 142,984 km across, shrinks the same outline to about 9 percent of its Earth width.
Using the globe and the planet preview
Drag the globe or use the arrow keys to spin it; switch to Drag Country, or hold Cmd or Ctrl, to move a highlighted outline. Centre selected brings your country to the middle of the view, where the orthographic projection is closest to true area. Turn on the solar system panel, pick a world, and drop the outline onto the preview, which you can zoom or open full screen. Reset scene returns everything to the start.
Why a globe, not a flat map, for this job
A Mercator map stretches area by the square of the secant of latitude, so Greenland, Canada, and Russia arrive on the page already inflated several times over. An orthographic globe shows the hemisphere as a camera in deep space would see it: areas near the centre of the disk are close to true, and only the limb foreshortens. That makes it the honest starting point before a country leaves Earth altogether.
Related scale tools
Questions about countries on other worlds
How big would my country be on Mars?
Mars has about 145 million km² of surface, close to Earth's total land area of about 149 million km². Any country therefore covers roughly the same fraction of Mars as it does of Earth's land: the United States about 6.8 percent, Australia about 5.3 percent, Japan about 0.26 percent.
How big would a country look on the Moon?
The Moon's surface is about 37.9 million km², so outlines cover far more of it. Russia's 17.1 million km² would wrap around roughly 45 percent of the Moon; the contiguous United States, about 8.1 million km², would cover about a fifth.
Why do countries shrink on Jupiter in this tool?
Because the outline is rescaled from Earth's 12,742 km diameter to the target world's diameter. Jupiter is about 11.2 times wider, so the same outline spans about 9 percent of the width it had on Earth, even though its area in square kilometres is unchanged.
Is an orthographic globe the true size of countries?
Near the centre of the visible disk, yes: the orthographic view keeps areas close to true and lets you compare two countries without Mercator's polar stretching. Toward the limb the surface tilts away and foreshortens, so centre the country you care about before judging it.
Which countries are most distorted on a flat map?
The high-latitude ones: Greenland, Russia, Canada, Antarctica, and the Nordic countries. On Mercator their apparent area is multiplied by roughly four at 60° latitude and by about ten at 72°; on this globe they return to their measured size.
Outlines are rescaled by diameter only; gravity, terrain, and atmosphere are not part of the comparison.