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Mars Express 3D Image Released

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the whole-lotta-mars-going-on dept.

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."

7 of 213 comments (clear)

  1. Congrats ESA by QuantumFTL · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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

  2. Spitit by icebones · · Score: 4, Interesting

    so, do they have any pictures of the Spirit rover, in those 3d pics?

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  3. Re:Certainly the earth has been better mapped by Rhubarb+Crumble · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I am pretty sure that many top secret government organizations have mapped the earth at a better resolution than 10 meters.

    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 Any map of earth gets out of date pretty quickly.

  4. Gaming? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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!

  5. More carefully mapped? by 3dr · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  6. Can't wait 'til they're done... by Verteiron · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ... 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!

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  7. Re:Certainly the earth has been better mapped by zoney_ie · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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).

    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_Expr ess/SE MUC75V9ED_0.html
    for details on the instruments.

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