Making Tracks on Mars

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."

Comments

An Initiative roll? Already made the saving throw

[EQ]

[insert D&D reference here]

I wonder what the Satellite has for initiative roll bonuses?

Crap.

[Skye16]

Can't we go to just ONE other planet without scattering our garbage about willy-nilly?!?!

What else...

[Anonymous Coward]

Now all they need to do is locate the massive impact crater left by Beagle 2.

Snoopy, where are you?

[argStyopa]

Any chance that they can use this process to search for Beagle?

You know the Surveyor guys are like "oh, sure, NOW you can look around and tell us what's interesting to investigate!"

This is old news

[sat1308]

I worked on the Mars Exploration Rovers (Spirit) this February at JPL and we had images like the posted one available almost as soon as the rover landed, of course you couldn't see the tracks back then...I don't have a link handy to any of the pictures from then I remember that we had a wall-sized poster where scientists used to guess where the rover would land. Some days later, once the rover landed, there was another poster with various points of interest (lander, parachute etc.) marked on it. So we have had images (also from the Mars Global Surveyor) like these for a long time only they weren't available to the public. If anything, these images bear testimony to the quality of the camera on-board MGS.

Re:This is old news

[sprouty76]

So it's old news to people who worked on the project - however, I think it's safe to say that doesn't include the vast majority of people reading this.

What does this say about Earth imaging?

[dpilot]

On the one hand, Mars does have a much thinner atmosphere, and I have no idea how low the Mars Global Surveyer orbit is.
On the other hand, *anything* we ship to Mars is a design compromise in terms of weight and size. So I'm sure the camera is sophisticated, but isn't this one of those times when size matters, especially on the objective lens?

I've found my house on Terraserver, and I couldn't see features as small as this picture gives us. Makes me wonder what spy satellites can do, what commercial imaging satellites can do, and what DHS wants to let us have.

Re:What does this say about Earth imaging?

[jstave]

Makes me wonder what spy satellites can do, what commercial imaging satellites can do, and what DHS wants to let us have.

The government spy satelites can actually image individual crinkles on our tin-foil hats.

What about the Moon?

[trash eighty]

have they ever tried doing this to look for the remains of the Apollo missions and other luna missions?

Re:What about the Moon?

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

they can't. Satelites can't look inside movie studios.

Erosion?

[Dan East]

Any estimate on how long it will take the tracks to erode until they are no longer visible, given the average winds in that area? Unlike the tracks on the moon, these shouldn't last too long (relatively speaking).

Dan East

Re:An Initiative roll?

[spectrokid]

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.

Terraforming or ecosynthesising mars

[tod_miller]

A little article with two boffins talking abour terraforming mars.

They harp on about oxygen levels. I started to wonder - what gas other than nitrogen would be good to compose the other 80% (assuming we reach earth density - could we have a 1/5 less atomosphere than was 99% 02?

So I think (although mars contains nitrogen - composition) the matter is how to make nitrogen and oxygen and enough co2.

Nitrogen in the air is vital for plant life also, so I think a valid nitrogen cycle, water cycle and healthy o2/co2 ratios would need to be established.

Would they find thier own levels, or will it be *bloody* hard to establish a balanced eco system?

Any other thoughts on mars ecosynthesis?

Re:It's pretty amazing when you think about it.

[argStyopa]

First, it's astronomy, not astrology. One is a science with reproducible experiments and predictable results; the other is a pagan near-religion whose results are entirely vague, and impossibly subjective.

Second, you're talking about a statistical sample of 2 planets (out of what, thousands of billions?). (And I daresay we've hardly explored #2 - heck, there are great chunks of EARTH we haven't explored.) To wash your hands of it saying 'well, haven't found life yet, we must be alone' is a bit presumptuous.

Second "Things like irreducible complexity in bacterial flagelli or the inability to intentionally design life from scratch while claiming that a roll of the dice made all this seems absurd." NOBODY (except Creationists commonly hiding behind the title of 'intelligent design theory' and busily building strawman arguments) has ever suggested that life is the result of the 'roll of the dice'.

We KNOW that in the presence of radiation, complex hydrocarbon chains such as those found around the universe will form amino acids (found both in liquid water on earth, and in insterstellar dust clouds http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0328/p11s01-stss.htm l).

We KNOW that these acids can spontaneously form proteins and quinones, among lots of other stuff, which in turn form proteins and (it's surmised) possibly the precursors to RNA.

Granted, we're not clear on that last, teeny step. But give scientists some benefit of the doubt - they've resolved the simplest forms of life down to the point where serious research projects are going on now to create life at a molecular level; to the credit of the researchers in the field, there seems to be a hesitation going on while some of the ethical and moral issues are discussed before proceeding.

I don't dispute with you your essential point - it IS pretty amazing when you think about it. I find the system of the universe a glorious and joyful ballet of energy, matter, and life. I don't know why people feel compelled to assume that God isn't competent enough to build it from the beginning to do what He wanted, and that He would have to stick his hand in and 'make' stuff happen.

Hubble HAS imaged Mars

[chalker]

Hubble has already imaged Mars. The resolution is nowhere close to these new images from MGS. They are images of the entire planet. Check them out here: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/ releases/1999/27/

Re:Unearthly

[saider]

Yeah, but you didn't design and build your car from scratch to get to your "exotic location". I'd be taking pictures of my car if it landed on another planet.

Re:Beagle2

[eutychus_awakes]

Probably not. They knew exactly where to look to see the rover, and they also were able to take many pictures of the same area at different sun angles (shadow lengths) to get one with enough contrast to show the tracks. Because the width of the rover's tracks is just at the pixel resolution of the orbiting camera, a little luck/persistence was required to get those shots, I imagine.

I, too would like to know where the Beagle2 lies. It is about as small as one pixel from an orbiting camera, so they'll need to find some other evidence (ejecta from an impact crater, etc.) to find it. It's very likely Beagle is the crack of a rock, for example.

Just wait for Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

[MtViewGuy]

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.

Re:Just wait for Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

[mopomi]

HiRISE on MRO will be able to resolve about 30 cm/pixel, not 150 mm, with a swath width of > 6 km for the greyscale images. It is not a remake of the Ikonos, though it is similar. A slice through the CCD array (I don't remember the number of CCDs in the array off the top of my head--must be 20) of the camera is something like (lameness/HTML filter screws this up--ignore the dots):

........BBBB
PPPPPPPPRRRRPPPPPPPP
........GGGG

Where the middle layer three CCDs deep are the "Blue", "Red", and "Green" (approx.) CCDs, while the others are the panchromatic (really the same as the "Red" in the color portion of the array). Each of the CCDs is something like 1024 pixels across, with a 6 pixel overlap on each side.

Check out:

http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/hirise

Re:Beagle 2, Viking's, Polar Lander, Mars landers.

[Tablizer]

I would be interested to see if the Viking landers are still visible

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mgs_mpf_viki ng_040107.html

heat shield impact site opportunity.

[Stephen Samuel]

After looking at one of the images It would appear that the rover is tantalizingly close to the impact site of it's heat shield. (OK: It's about another 4 months drive across the Bonniville crater).

I'm thinking that the heatshield impact should have dug a pretty nice divot out of the ground, which might make a pretty good opportunity for examining deep layers of soil on the edge of a large impact crater.

Possible to find all sorts if interesting things in there... almost as good as the crater itself. (presuming that the rover can get out on the other side, that is.)