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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."

2 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. 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.
    --
    My work here is dung.
  2. 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.