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

Ummm...

[Max Threshold]

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

Re:Ummm...

[grammar fascist]

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.

Re:Ummm...

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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

Re:Ummm...

[Hijacked Public]

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.

Not Really the First

[eldavojohn]

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.

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?

This is news?

[Jarnis]

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.

Google

[Kurayamino-X]

How long untill they're on google mars?

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

[maddogdelta]

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

So, Beagle? can we find it?

[advocate_one]

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

In fact, the resolution is *so* high...

[RulerOf]

...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.

Re:Lens Hood

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Craters?

[Andrewkov]

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.

Re:Craters?

[bdeclerc]

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.