Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Making Tracks on Mars

Posted by michael on from the leave-only-footprints-and-landers dept.

An anonymous reader writes "In a remarkable series of orbital pictures, the Mars Global Surveyor's cameras have imaged the tracks of the Spirit rover on the surface. Individual debris pieces including the backshell and lander are visible with remarkable clarity using an innovative roll of the satellite."

2 of 179 comments (clear)

  1. Re:An Initiative roll? by spectrokid · · Score: 5, Informative
    Over the past year and a half, the camera and spacecraft teams for Mars Global Surveyor have worked together to develop a technique that allows us to roll the entire spacecraft so that the camera can be scanned in a way that sees details at three times higher resolution than we normally get," said Dr. Ken Edgett, staff scientist for Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, Calif., which built and operates the Mars Orbiter Camera. The technique adjusts the rotation rate of the spacecraft to match the ground speed under the camera.

    It is a line camera, X resolution is set by number of pixels, Y resolution by mars rotation speed and number of scans per second. If the satelite rolls opposite to mars rotation, it is as if mars rotates more slowly, therefore higher Y resolution. Price to pay is you end up rotating out of view, so smaller pictures, but more detailed ones.

    --

    10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then

  2. Just wait for Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. by MtViewGuy · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you think the images from Mars Global Surveyor look awesome, the images from the upcoming Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter should be nothing short of AWESOME.

    Given that MRO will likely use a modified version of the same camera system used on the Ikonos imaging satellite (Ikonos can resolve down to 100 cm resolution from a 300 km orbit through Earth's thick atmosphere), the combination of the lower orbit and the very thin atmosphere on Mars means there are estimates that the MRO cameras could resolve objects as small as 150 millimeters across in the visual light spectrum! At that resolution, MRO could finally put to bed the controversy about the anomalous features on the Cydonia plain of Mars that some people claim are not natural features of that plain.