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Mars Express 3D Image Released
zoney_ie writes "As reported in BBC News Online, ESA (European Space Agency) have released an image of the surface of Mars, captured in 3D and full colour. Europe's Mars Express orbiter has been taking pictures of the Martian surface at down to 10m resolution. The mission will result in Mars being more carefully mapped than Earth has been to date! Full size image available on ESA's Mars Express Website."
As a NASA worker, I'd like to congradulate the ESA on their success with Mars Express.
Welcome to Mars!
Cheers,
Justin Wick
Science Activity Planner Developer
Mars Exploration Rovers
The mission will result in Mars being more carefully mapped than Earth has been to date!
Uhh.. I'm sure you're not including military mapping. Military topographical maps are quite accurate. Of course once Mars has strategic military importance (or oil) these maps will be available only to King George and his friends.
so, do they have any pictures of the Spirit rover, in those 3d pics?
Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something.
Maybe, but there's no construction activity on mars, precious little erosion (wind only, no water) and (I think?) no continental drift. Any map of earth gets out of date pretty quickly.
Are these images copyrighted, or are they put straight into the public domain? It sure would be cool to play a realtime strategy game (Dune 2005? heh.) right on the surface of Mars!
Well, let's think about this.
Considering we have publicly accessible aerial imagery down to 1m resolution (and you know the US military has sub-meter capability for their purposes) in selected areas, and 2m and 10m over the rest of the world, I'd say there is far more detail on Earth than Mars.
Further, the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission/SRTM mapped some 85% of the Earth's surface. Much of the data that mission generated is actually redundant, with some areas being scanned 3 times. This makes that data even more reliable, although it's fairly coarse at only 1arcsec resolution.
And IIRC, the Russian EGNOS (?) data covers Europe-to-Asia with decent resolution.
Anyway, I'm not busting the submitter's chops for this comment. I think the Mars mapping is fantastic, and I wish those of us interested in amateur digital cartography (now *there's* a party conversation topic) had equally easy access to Mars data.
Video games should make more use of all the terrain data governments generate.
They can do that, while the USA tries to play whack-a-beagle.
/ \
\ / ASCII ribbon campaign for peace
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The resolution of Mars Express camera is circa 10m so it could be possible to spot Spirit if the pass is at the right time of day (Martian Dawn/Dusk and it can cast a 10+m shadow)
There could also be a possibilty of spotting Spirit or Beagles chutes if they have played out flat on the surface (and not been blown miles away by now)
I'm pretty sure this isn't a huge mission priority right at the moment because i'd imagine it taking a lot of analysis to find them in the pixels.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
It would be cool if they mapped this high resolution surface in Keyhole.
It already has Mars, but it's very low resolution (and not very 3d.)
~Berj
Yes, Mom/Dad, but...
Mars is easier, because all of it is exposed to optical view from orbit, whereas ~70% of the Earth is under water.
will the images be publicly available for download? i remember that the esa and nasa mapped earth with a stereo antenna from the space shuttle and that the data costs a buck load of money to use.
I used to work here. Most of Alaska and surrounding environs is available at 10m:
http://www.asf.alaska.edu/
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All generalizations are false, including this one. Mark Twain
... so I can make a normalmap out of it, dump it into Celestia and watch it bring my computer to a screeching halt.
Talk about fun!
End of lesson. You may press the button.
I was under the impression it was the combination of the amount (they hope to scan approx. 2/3s of Mars) and the resolution (which although 12m for this image, the ESA website mentions 10m, with a smaller amount taken at 2m resolution).
r ess/SE MUC75V9ED_0.html
Also the camera is only one instrument. Mineral composition will be mapped, as will the atmosphere with an array of equipment - spectrometers, atom analyser, radio, radar...
It's a pretty nifty piece of kit.
Check out:
http://www.esa.int/export/SPECIALS/Mars_Exp
for details on the instruments.
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
BZZZZ! Wrong!
The idea of government is to provide for the common welfare of the people. If the government has already collected the data for other purposes, then providing that data free (or at most the cost of providing it) should not be considered "competition". Our tax money has already paid for it; there is nothing that says some other private entity has the right to prevent the government from publishing the data just so that private entity can make a profit.
One thing that really irks me is that the United States IRS refuses to allow individuals to electronically submit their returns independent of a paid service. Their rationale, as stated on their web site, is that this would be unfair competition with private businesses (tax preparation companies). How can they consider my ability to submit an electronic return to be competition with a business that prepares the return (does all the calculations for you). The IRS should provide electronic blank forms that I can fill in and submit, whether I have to do the math myself or the IRS does the math for me is irrelevant to me.
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
...especially in the 3D-image (look at the upper left region). Photo is propably taken during some early morning or late evening hours (shadows casted by the mountains) so it could be a possibility.
It was the most spectacular part of the mission for sure, but in term of scientific return they estimated it to be between 20 and 25% of the whole Mars Express experiment.
Iraq: war to save the U
you are forgetting that 70% of Earth surface is covered with water
This is quite true. Over the past 50 years there have been less than half a dozen deep submersible explorations of the deep ocean ranges. Every time someone has scrounged together resources to go take a look down there we find new lifeforms, new biological chemistries, and amazing new chemical depositions, and evidence of extraordinarily catastrophic submarine avalanches in our recent geologic past. It seems sad to me that we spend quite a lot of money exploring rocks in the sky and basically no money exploring 70% our own planet. Instead of dreaming about expensively hauling people up out of the gravity well to live in doomed colonies on sterile worlds with no ecosystems, let's start planning our own undersea cities!
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