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First Super Close-Up Pictures of Mars

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the extreme-close-up dept.

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."

29 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. Ummm... by Max+Threshold · · Score: 4, Funny

    Aren't the Mars rovers "super close up"?

    1. Re:Ummm... by grammar+fascist · · Score: 3, Funny

      Yeah, but with the rover pictures all you see is the same old thing: sand and rocks. Now, with these cool new ones, there's a qualitative difference: they show rocks and sand.

      --
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    2. Re:Ummm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      And blueberries. Don't forget the blueberries found by the Opportunity rover.

      Mmmm.... blueberries. Must ... get ... breakfast.

    3. Re:Ummm... by 4D6963 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Beagle is the most closest, I guess...

      Yup, Beagle 2 must be actually the most deeperest, considered how it must have crashed its way to the martian underground.

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    4. Re:Ummm... by Hijacked+Public · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Close ups, or super close ups, are matters of opinion. Only when a photo is made with 1:1 magnification do you have any sort of strict definition, and then you have a Macro.


      Photos taken through a microscope are properly called photomicrographs and they can have all sorts of different magnifications.

      I don't know if this furthers anyone's understanding of the subject matter but I though I would point it out.

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  2. Not Really the First by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Interesting
    First Super Close-Up Pictures of Mars
    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.
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    1. Re:Not Really the First by Savage-Rabbit · · Score: 2, Insightful
      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.
      --
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    2. Re:Not Really the First by 10Ghz · · Score: 2, Funny

      "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"

      People on Earth: 6+ billion
      People on Mars: 0

      I think you are missing something pretty obvious here :).

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    3. Re:Not Really the First by Tim+C · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

      --
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    4. Re:Not Really the First by mph · · Score: 2, Insightful
      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.
    5. Re:Not Really the First by anaesthetica · · Score: 3, Insightful
      As a European, I'm kind of ambivalent about this.

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

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    6. Re:Not Really the First by Shooter6947 · · Score: 2, Informative

      I don't know where this 1 meter stuff came from. The actual full sampling of HiRISE is 30cm, a factor of 6 greater than HRSC, and a factor of 3 better than MOC. Be careful when comparing "sampling" to "resolution" -- they are not the same thing. HiRISE has taken the HiROAD, so to speak, by not trumpeting their 30cm sampling but instead claiming 1-meter imaging scales. Don't hold that against them when comparing to other teams that publish their best sampling.

      The other real advantage of this camera is that it returns 14-bit images -- this means that they get dynamic range such that you can see details well, with good S/N, EVEN IN SHADOW, while keeping the well-lit stuff from saturating. Truly awesome. On Friday, when those images come down, 20,000 by 60,000 with awesome signal-to-noise, full dynamic range, and 30cm surface sampling, you will agree that this is a large forward step for Martian surface science.

  3. This is news? by Jarnis · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The pictures released so far are from the first tests of the camera - done last MARCH.

    New pictures will start coming soon (november?), as the orbit circularization has been completed, but none has been released yet.

    1. Re:This is news? by ShakaZ · · Score: 2, Funny

      Of course they still need to photoshop the thousands of images to remove the green creatures & their buildings... double the resolution, 4x more work, add to that Nasa's funding that's far from what it once was...

  4. As opposed to? by fantomas · · Score: 2, Funny

    As opposed to ? ... The most power camera to orbit Mars since last Wednesday .. for example?

    fantastic headline, "the most powerful camera ever"... :-)

  5. Google by Kurayamino-X · · Score: 3, Funny

    How long untill they're on google mars?

    --
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  6. Re:Ummm...Wasn't this the first 'super close up'? by maddogdelta · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

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  7. So, Beagle? can we find it? by advocate_one · · Score: 3, Interesting

    it should show up as a pixel at least...

    --
    Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
    1. Re:So, Beagle? can we find it? by eclectro · · Score: 2, Informative

      it should show up as a pixel at least..

      It'll probably be more than a pixel. Like an itty bitty crater with junk near the edges.

      Look, here's the picture already--> o*

      --
      Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
  8. In fact, the resolution is *so* high... by RulerOf · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...That we'll finally be able to determine if the hand that belongs to that face on the Martian surface is giving us the finger.

    --
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  9. Lens Hood by 07734 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The pictures of the camera being used feature a lens hood with coverage on only one side. This confuses me. Surely when the camera is pointing down, as in the illustration, and the satellite is orbiting, the lens hood would need shield light to protect from flares at all angles (like a conventional camera's lens hood). Anyone care to shoot me down and explain?

    1. Re:Lens Hood by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Lens Hood by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      The reason is that a complete hood will cause glare/lens flare from the light reflected off of the inside of the sides of the hood exposed to the sun.

      Setup your lamp and tennis ball. Now point a camera with a full hood at the tennis ball. Notice that parts of the inside of your hood will be illuminated by the lamp. This will cause major light pollution for a highly sensitive camera.

  10. Re:Start with the jokes by stjobe · · Score: 2, Informative
    Cydonia...

    Is it really "intensely curious", or is it the fact that it's just not that interesting an area? Hasn't it been analyzed to death already? Does it even look like a face if you don't squint your eyes and believe?

    Here's a few links about it anyway:
    http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEM09F8LU RE_0.html http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/2 2/0634233 http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/hoagland/face .html http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/ mars_face_010525-1.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_on_Mars

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  11. They are two complementary missions by YA_Python_dev · · Score: 2, Insightful
    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.

    --
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  12. Re:NASA to ESA by astralbat · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Seriously, this really could allow us to see what happened with the ill fated Beagle 2 lander. I for one am curious.

  13. Does This Mean... by CheeseburgerBrown · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...we'll finally be able to identify the Transformer who vandalized the Mars Rover?

    I bet it was frickin' Starscream, that bitch.

    --
    These stories are free but worth money.
  14. Craters? by Andrewkov · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm not an astronomy buff, so this might be a stupid question. But why are there so many craters on Mars? Doesn't the atmosphere protect the planet like here on Earth? It appears that there are almost as many craters as on the Moon. I guess the atmosphere is very thin on Mars.

    1. Re:Craters? by bdeclerc · · Score: 3, Informative

      Actually, while the Earth's atmosphere does prevent the formation of the smallest craters, the main reason Earth has far fewer craters than Mars is that the Earth's surface is, on average, much much younger than Mars' surface. Most cratering occured very early in the existence of the solar system, and on Earth erosion and continental drift mean that practically nowhere on Earth can we find a surface that is as old as the early cratering periods. Even the oldest rocks on Earth (in locations such as Canada, South-Africa & Australia) may be old, but they were not always at the surface.

      On Mars, there never was any real "rebuilding" of the surface at the scale of what happened on Earth (except for some volcanism, wind erosion and water erosion). This means Mars retains almost all the ancient craters which on Earth have long disappeared.

      Now, besides that, Mars' atmosphere is only about 1% of Earth's, and as such, is also much less capable of slowing down meteoroids, so on Mars, craters can form which are considerably smaller than the smallest that can form on Earth, because meteoroids small enough to burn up in Earth's atmosphere would still reach the surface at orbital velocities on Mars.

      So, basically, plate-tectonics, erosion and a bigger atmospheric shield are all reasons why Earth has far fewer craters than Mars.