International Mapping Standards Updated for Planets throughout Solar System | U.S. Geological Survey Skip to main content # International Mapping Standards Updated for Planets throughout Solar System By Communications and Publishing Clarifying Latitude and Longitude for Planets besides Earth The internationally agreed upon standards for mapping planets and objects other than Earth throughout the solar system have been updated in a new report led by the U.S. Geological Survey. These standards include definitions of the latitude and longitude systems and body size and shape for all mapped objects. The new parameters can be universally used by planetary science researchers to assign geographic position information to their data sets, allowing them to be registered and compared at known levels of accuracy and precision. “These new standards ensure that anyone around the world, including individual scientists, instrument teams, spacecraft missions and space agencies, can make maps and geographically register information that can be compared and used interchangeably,” said Brent Archinal, a USGS scientist and the lead author of the study. “The recommended parameters will also allow