First Super Close-Up Pictures of Mars

Alien54 writes "The most powerful camera ever to orbit Mars will get its first close look at the Red Planet on Friday. The High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera flying aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) will relay its first low-altitude images to scientists at The University of Arizona beginning September 29. User-friendly web tools will be available to both the science community and the public to view/analyze HiRISE images and to submit observation requests. Processed images will be released soon after acquisition to allow everyone to share in the scientific discovery process. By combining very high resolution and signal-to-noise ratio with a large swath width, it is possible to for images to be collected on scales down to 1 meter."

Comments

Re:Not Really the First

[Savage-Rabbit]

Look, I love and worship NASA as much as the next American but I must point out that (from another Slashdot article) the ESA's Mars Express has used a High Resolution Stereo Camera on selected areas at a super resolution of 2 metres/pixel.

Now, 1 meter resolution might be twice as good as 2 meter resolution but my dumbass isn't going to know the difference. My point is that those are two very high resolutions so I think the Mars Express gets the credit of being the first to get super close-up pictures. Don't worry, American's will not be out done by Europeans -- there will not be a super resolution images of mars gap! Every American will now be proud to say that their screensaver takes up roughly twice the amount of room as their European counterpart. :-)

In all seriousness though, these images would be very useful for selecting landing sites for more missions and possibly manned missions in the very far future. The MRO and Mars Express seem to have very similar objectives -- studying the composition of Mars, it's weather, atmosphere & geology -- I wonder if they couldn't have been a combined effort for an even greater return. Then again, I'm just glad both of them are fulfilling their goals instead of both burning up on entry due to a conversion of units error.

As a European, I'm kind of ambivalent about this. On the one hand there will probably be more human traffic on Mars for the forseeable future than on all the other planets of our solar system combined so with two of these cameras in orbit around Mars vital survey work will be done a lot faster, which is important. On the other hand running many duplicate missions in parallel or gunning for the bragging rights of having the piece of some type of equipment on Mars seems pretty futile since it does nothing to advance science. With expeditions to Mars being as difficult, expensive and few in number as they are I'd say that as a general rule it would be better for ESA and NASA to quitely agree to diversify the nature of their missions as much as possible to cover the maximum possible amount of scientific ground and then to share the results than to duplcate each others projects to often. In this case, of course, I'll once again concede that survey work is an exception due to it's fundamental importance. Let's just hope this does not degenerate into a ESA vs. NASA propaganda contest similar to the one between the USA and USSR where science took second place to the quest for PR points.

Re:Ummm...Wasn't this the first 'super close up'?

[maddogdelta]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_1

Re:Lens Hood

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Try this at home. Turn on a lamp in your house. Pretend it is the sun. Now take a tennis ball and pretend it is Mars.

Turn off all other lights in your house and close all the windows so that the only light sources are the light coming from the lamp and whatever left-over LEDs are blinking on your router or VCR or wherever. If you want to block out peripheral light that has a chance to cause lens flare, you only need to block the light coming from the lamp. Since this is space we're talking about, there aren't any walls to bounce stray light around. All relevant light is either coming from the lamp or is reflected off the tennis ball.

Since you only need to shield for the lamp, you only need to have a lens hood on the side closest to the lamp.

They are two complementary missions

[YA_Python_dev]

On the other hand running many duplicate missions in parallel or gunning for the bragging rights of having the piece of some type of equipment on Mars seems pretty futile since it does nothing to advance science.

They are not duplicate missions at all!

In fact they are petty much very complementary: if you carefully compare the list of instruments you'll find different instruments or similar instruments that complement each other. E.g.: the Sub-surface Sounding Radar of the European mission can go down to several kilometres under the surface, while the equivalent radar on the US mission can reach only one kilometre but has an higher resolution and sensitivity (BTW they are both provided by ASI, the Italian Space Agency).

The super high resolution images are complementary too, because each mission will take only pictures of a small percentage of the surface at this resolution (Mars Express will map the entire surface "only" at 10 metres/pixel).

And Mars is a whole new world, by the Gods: it can't be completely explored by a single orbiter (or ten). Even two identical missions will almost double the scientific output.

Re:Not Really the First

[Tim C]

Whereis the cutoff point between a normal high resolution camera and a "super-high" one, anyway?

When you're writing press releases, it's just to the lower resolution side of what you just deployed. When you're writing grant proposals, it's just to the higher resolution side of what you currently have deployed.

Re:Not Really the First

[mph]

Who are these moderators and where do they come from? The post was obviously "funny" and not "insightful". Do these moderators actually think the mars rovers were created by aliens? If the rovers were not created by aliens, then I think it's safe to say, human traffic exists on Mars.

No, they're working around a perceived deficiency in Slashdot's moderation system. A "Funny +1" moderation doesn't increase the poster's karma, but an "Insightful +1" moderation does. This inconsistency can also lead to things like a poster's karma going down for getting both a "Funny +1" and "Overrated -1" moderation, just because two moderators disagree; many moderators consider this to be unfair.

Re:Not Really the First

[anaesthetica]

As a European, I'm kind of ambivalent about this.

That just about sums it up, doesn't it?