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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!
"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
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.
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.
... 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"...
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Express has mapped the entire planet?
Not the entire planet. It's a fairly narrow strip of the planet. The main mapping mission hasn't begun yet. For now they are just calibrating the science instruments. I guess this image is part of that test.
Looks great! They will be mapping more than just Mars aswell, Phobos will also be globally mapped for the first time ever.
BTW, anyone know why there hasn't been any new Spirt images in the last 3 or 4 days?
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
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...