Slashdot Mirror
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!
"You never finish anything! Why don't you go and finish the Earth before you go running off to map some other silly planet?"
[ Don't reply to this ]
Spot the beagle !
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
I am pretty sure that many top secret government organizations have mapped the earth at a better resolution than 10 meters.
Or did you think the US bombed the chinense embassy on accident?
so, do they have any pictures of the Spirit rover, in those 3d pics?
Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something.
In addition to the scientific value, that image makes terrific wallpaper, and it is scaled perfectly for my monitor.
Here
Dephine URL
Seabed maps are not nearly as acurate as land maps.
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!
They need to get this thing over that so-called face. This clearly has the resolution to reveal the truth that it's probably a butt.
a la NASA's "Blue Marble" images for Earth?
:)
That's one thing NASA has over ESA - they release a lot more material into the public domain... and this time I'm actually paying for it with my tax Euros, so I say they should release the images to us all
Earth is mapped, near real time, to about 1 foot with military satellites.
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.
It's only ONE aspect of the Mars Express mission.
On the website we can read:
The Mars Express Orbiter will:
image the entire surface at high resolution (10 m/pixel) and selected areas at super resolution (2 m/pixel)
produce a map of the mineral composition of the surface at 100 m resolution
map the composition of the atmosphere and determine its global circulation
determine the structure of the sub-surface to a depth of a few kilometres
determine the effect of the atmosphere on the surface
determine the interaction of the atmosphere with the solar wind
Beagle2 failed but it was only 20% of the mission.
Iraq: war to save the U
did anyone else notice the part in the ESA disclaimer about if the picture contained any recognizable individual.... wonder what they know about mars that we don't....
If the full georegistered archive is made available I'll be pleased. Otherwise it will be just another data-source for ESA to make money off of.
Given all the taxes paid citizens of the ESA member nations it had sure better be made publicly available.
Even excluding military mapping, there is pretty good coverage of earth. And the article says it's 12m resolution, while the submitter is claiming 10m.
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.
So in little longer than Spirit has moved about 4 steps, Express has mapped the entire planet? Not bad...
As for the "better than earth" maps, I think they include the 70% of our planet that is under water.
Wow... can't believe mods find my post +5 interesting... it's so easy to get modded up on slashdot when you're from NASA :)
:)
Hmm... maybe NASA faked my karma... tinfoil hat people, maybe you can explain?
Cheers,
Justin Wick
At 10m resolution, one or two pixels in the images will have some light from Spirit, yes. =)
But I think the joining forces around Mars link from the main page is very cool.
From the article:
Agustin Chicarro, ESA's Project Scientist for Mars Express, said: "This is the first time that two space agencies are co-operating on another planet with two spacecraft. It is remarkable to know that one is in orbit and one is on the surface, both taking measurements to complement each other."
The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something; for the box might even be empty.
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
Right, so that image they put up is nifty and shows that they have been able to extrapolate altitude from the stereo aspect of the cam.
But for those of us who like to do our own 3D modeling, when will they release the whole-planet texture and heightmaps (a la NASA's Blue Planet, as mentioned by another poster)? I want to be able to load that stuff up and then make my own animations of probes/ships/etc., complete with landing and interacting with the environment.
Besides, without that data, how can I start to plan how to terraform the planet? And how can I decide the optimum location for my evil lair?
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.
Well, now we know why Beagle 2 didn't survive...E MPM75V9ED_1.html
http://www.esa.int/export/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/S
My apologies, the image available was taken at 12m resolution according to the article.
The details on the High-res Stereoscopic Camera HRSC on ESA's website had the 10m number:
"The HRSC will image the entire planet in full colour, 3D and with a resolution of about 10 metres. Selected areas will be imaged at 2-metre resolution. One of the camera's greatest strengths will be the unprecedented pointing accuracy achieved by combining images at the two different resolutions. Another will be the 3D imaging which will reveal the topography of Mars in full colour."
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
... 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.
Hmm.. Mars = big. Rez 10m of mars... Fullsize pictures. "Calling ISP to ask for bandwidth"...
---
From the FAQ: "You may freely use the images you find on our site, as long as it is not for commercial use. You may not modify the images. If you intend to use any of the images on a website, please acknowledge that it originates from ESA. For more information, see our Terms and conditions of use."
However, in those terms and conditions, it goes on to say the following:
"The contents of the ESA Web Portal are intended for the personal and non-commercial use of its users. ESA grants permission to users to visit the site, and to download and copy information, images, documents and materials from the website for users' personal non-commercial use. ESA does not grant the right to resell or redistribute any information, documents, images or material from its website or to compile or create derivative works from material on its website. Use of material on the website is subject to the terms and conditions outlined below.
All material published on the ESA Web Portal is protected by copyright and owned or controlled by ESA or the party credited as the provider of the content, software or other material.
Users may not modify, publish, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, reproduce, create derivative works from, distribute, perform, display or in any way exploit any of the content, software, material or services, in whole or in part, without obtaining prior written authorisation. In order to obtain authorisation to display or use any content of the ESA Web Portal, please make a request for authorization by clicking on 'Contact us'."
Damnations.
Turkeyphant
...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.
But wow, look at what's going on on the ground. The new rover images are really remarkable.
I feel bad for the Europeans and the loss of the Beagle. Hopefully this won't dissuade European policy makers from continuing to explore the stars, and honestly, a friendly rivalry will help the space programs on all continents.
It seems better to have nations compete to build spacecraft to expore the heavens with than it is to have them compete to build more armies with.
This is my sig.
CNN has an article about Bush's sudden fascination with the space program and it points out how he never once visited the NASA facilities in Houston while he was governor there. Also the convenient timing of his announcement that just happens to coincide with the Democrat front-runners ganging up on Howard Dean is mentioned.
One of the first casualties of the cuts that are necessary to make Bush's 'vision' a reality has been the Hubble, as reported in New Scientist.
See also some concise reporting from the Economist that takes a cold, unemotional look at the question of whether or not we actually need manned spaceflight at all. From that article:
Excuse me for sounding like an 'incorrigible cynic,' but the guy doesn't exactly have a good record with telling the truth.I digress.
That paper has long held an anti-manned-spaceflight view, which I would say is a bit short-sighted in view of the vulnerability of Earth to catastrophic bombardments from above.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
I think the point being missed here is that very few mappings have been done of Earth using *the same single instrument*.
A very good illustration of how important this became available when the Hiparcos and Tycho star-catalogs were produced by the Hiparcos satellite (also ESA).
When the resulting catalog were compared to ground based astrometric catalogs, every single one of them showed systematic errors of varying magnitude.
Even with the best instruments and the most careful technicians and scientists, systematic errors between instruments, methods and setups exist. When it comes to consistency, a single instrument in a single setup beats anything else.
I don't doubt that military "assets" exist which can image the birds in my garden playing soccer with breadcrumbs but they have never made a global map (even ignoring the two thirds which is water) with the same single instrument.
SAREX came close, but no cigar: the polar caps were missing.
I think ESAs claim stands: They're doing it better than we ever bothered to do it here.
Poul-Henning
Poul-Henning Kamp -- FreeBSD since before it was called that...
Sure, they were. The dinos settled Earth decided to abstain from technology, much like the Amish/Mennonites. The ones that settled Mars were the ones that kept the technology, which they eventually used in a massive orgy of self destruction millenia ago.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
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!
Da Blog