Google Street View goes off-roading in Alberta's Badlands

You've no doubt seen the Google Street View cars trolling around with cameras mounted to their rooftops, getting panoramic views of highways, streets and avenues of urban and suburban locales around the world, including right here in Calgary.

But now, in partnership with the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC), Google Trekker is exploring the lunar-like landscape of Alberta's Badlands.

• Google camera maps Johnson's Mills Shorebird Reserve

The idea is to give people around the world, who've never had a chance to hike the canyon, get a close-up view of the beautifully strange five-km long crater-like formation.

The Google Trekker equipment, which NCC borrowed for the summer, will capture photos of Horseshoe Canyon on Highway 9 near Drumheller.

It does that using a20-kg orb, about the size of soccer ball,outfitted with 15 lenses.

The orb isattached to a periscope-type stalk and mounted on a backpack that will be carried by a person. The technology allows panoramic photos to be taken every 2.5 seconds and then each image is given a GPS location.

The NCC chose Horseshoe Canyonfor its unique topography formed about 70 million years ago, and its unusual ecosystem.

The project is part of a Nature Conservancy vision to showcase diverse ecosystems across the country.