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Terabytes of Mars Pictures Released to Public

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the bandwidth-fu dept.

Riding with Robots writes "The team that runs the high-rez camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has just released more than 1,200 Mars images to the Planetary Data System, NASA's mission data archive. The team has also released 1.7 Terabytes of data to a user-friendly site that allows users to quickly home in on each image, most of which are a gigabyte-sized files measuring 20,000 by 50,000 pixels. Not all the images have been thoroughly studied yet: in the announcement, the camera's lead scientist said, 'These images must contain hundreds of important discoveries about Mars. We just need time to realize what they are.'"

19 of 137 comments (clear)

  1. With one thing edited out that is.... by 0.693 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Pictures of the faces on the surfaces! It's a conspiracy. They didn't land a man on the moon, but there is Jesus on Mars.

    1. Re:With one thing edited out that is.... by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Pictures of the faces on the surfaces! It's a conspiracy. They didn't land a man on the moon, but there is Jesus on Mars.

      With so many images in the public hands, there are bound to be some interesting "patterns" found that will generate gajillion conspiracy theories. Even with the Viking landers that returned only a limited amount of images, people found letters on rocks. With the rovers, people are finding skulls and lots of other doodads. With even more images out there, there are likely to be even more coincidental shapes found. The more patterns available to search, the more coincidental iconic images will be found. Maybe they'll find Elvis tap dancing with Jesus under a pyrimid. This raises a hugely important question: How do I buy stock in conspiracy books?

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
  2. Google Mars by geekmansworld · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Does this mean we can look forward to a new, improved Google Mars?

    1. Re:Google Mars by freakmn · · Score: 3, Funny

      That's nothing. Check out Google Moon, and it gives you a detailed map of the moon with place markers for the landings from the Apollo Missions. It's so detailed, in fact, that if you zoom in all the way, you can see the very material that the moon is made from! It's amazing to see, so check it out yourself!

      --
      warning: This post is likely to contain gobs of dripping sarcasm. Consume at your own risk.
  3. Classified Images by realisticradical · · Score: 3, Funny

    Bah, obviously they're fake like the moon landing. They're covering for the real reason we went, to spy on the great Martian civilizations.

  4. Gigabyte files? by WaZiX · · Score: 4, Funny

    And the site posted on Slashdot?

    Bye Bye server!

    1. Re:Gigabyte files? by bdjacobson · · Score: 3, Interesting

      And the site posted on Slashdot?

      Bye Bye server! This would be perfect for a torrent.
  5. Darn undiscovered discoveries... by VidEdit · · Score: 4, Funny

    " 'These images must contain hundreds of important discoveries about Mars. We just need time to realize what they are.'" ...er, and discover them.

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  6. The Terrorists Win by drooling-dog · · Score: 4, Funny

    Oh, that's just great... Now The Terrorists will know where to put their Martian bombz.

  7. Stress test by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Terrabytes of data, linked to slashdot...seriously what could go wrong?

  8. Fake! by suv4x4 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Those fotos are all fake: NASA setup a Mars stage on the Moon, and colored it red in Photo Shop. They used Total Recal as a referens!!

    Such obvios scam, I can't believe youv fallen for it, guyz!

  9. meh by Aqua_boy17 · · Score: 4, Funny

    I personally think I'll wait for the Google street level view. Then maybe we'll be able to catch the 'Face' on Mars walking out of a porn shop.

    --
    What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
  10. /. ed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Anybody have a mirror up yet?

  11. Re:Data! by magarity · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Exactly; there are hundreds of thousands of quite knowledgeable amateur astronomers who will pour over these images. What a great way to find interesting things more quickly and with bandwidth fees your only budget. But I missed the link for 'submit your interesting findings here.'

  12. free images of Earth and Mars by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's funny that freely available satellite images of Mars have greater resolution than freely available images of Earth.

  13. Re:Alright, let's take down Arizona! by cashman73 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Wow! The UA server crashed already,... and it wasn't even porn!

  14. Wrong title? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I thought we had Terrabytes of Earth pictures. Wouldn't we have Marsbytes of Mars pics?

  15. Re:1.7 Terabytes..... what a waste! by spun · · Score: 5, Funny

    What? What are you talking about, just look at her, she's got HUGE volcanoes, man! I'd motorboat the hell out of those mountains. She's got the deepest gash of any planet in the freakin' solar system dude! I'd totally hit the Valles Marineris.

    --
    - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
  16. JPEG2000 by teridon · · Score: 3, Informative

    The images are in the (unpopular?) JPEG2000 format; you'll probably need a special viewer to see them. See their FAQ from the google cache (since the site may go down...)

    If you're using Windows, the FAQ claims that IrfanView will work -- but I never had any luck with it. Despite having 2GB of memory in my computer, I always got an "out of memory" error when attempting to load the ~500MB images. The plugin from Expressview worked for me.

    --
    I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing. -- Thomas Jefferson