First full-resolution images of the Martian surface

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/pia16013.html

by ed209 • 14 years ago

435 139 14 years ago

nasa.gov

outside1234• 14 years ago

i hate to be critical of an image sent from millions of miles away but I have an honest question:

Why do images from landers like this always look like there were taken from a iPhone 1's camera?

pavel_lishin2• 14 years ago

If I had to guess - and I do, because I don't work for NASA - it's because there's a limited payload space on board, and visible images are some of the least interesting things, science-wise, that you can ask from Mars. Combine this with the electronics-unfriendly environment, and you probably aren't going to be strapping huge DLSR's on a 2.5 billion dollar science machine.

Edit: Also, these appear to be the navigation cameras, so they're probably just good enough to be able to point the rover in a direction free of road hazards and tell it to boldly go where no other machine has yet gotten around to going.

hnriot3• 14 years ago

I doubt that is the reason, the weight of a 16mp sensor or marginally more than a 2mp one. The metal camera supports are much likely to dwarf the sensor weight differences.

most of a DSLR's weight is lens and battery(s), both of which are not issues in this case, since the lens would be the same and the power comes from a nuclear battery.

NASA couldn't just bolt on a 5DmkIII and expect it to work because the electronics would be fried.

That said, the Apollo missions took a not-very-modified Hasselblad camera with them that worked fine, which is why we have much higher resolution pictures of the moon, despite it being decades ago.

shin_lao• 14 years ago

Patience, better images will come. They need to deploy the camera fully and it will take time to retrieve the data.

hnriot3• 14 years ago

It has only a 2 megapixel sensor, which is a shame. I am sure that it has something to do with radiation hardening and the other environmental factors.

It would be good though if NASA did catch up with sensor technology. I suspect the 2MP sensor was approved years ago when it was state of the art.

pyoung• 14 years ago

Yup, this mission has been in the works for ~10 years so I would imagine that they chose the specific sensor at least 6-7 years ago.

Also NASA is notoriously risk averse (for good reason). Apparently it is very common for them to rely on old but proven technology. Some of this has to do with risk aversion, but I imagine some of it also has to do with budget. It pains me to think what NASA could be doing with 10x more money.

skeletonjelly3• 14 years ago

Sure they have a 2 megapixel camera, but there are probably good reasons, of which you mentioned one I can think of. The other being that they can only send back limited data which has to contest with scientific experiments and navigation data, and they can take multiple 2MP shots to make a panorama like they do, effectively making a higher res image (assuming they can zoom).

djahng• 14 years ago

More megapixels isn't necessarily better. The sensor was probably chosen for a specific reason, one reason may be that the sensor was matched to the optics (lenses) they decided to use...

trafficlight• 14 years ago

These images aren't even from the main cameras. These are still navcam images.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity_rover#Rover_instrumen...

sosuke• 14 years ago

I'm psyched they have a camera that can take true color images! Now we can see what Mars looks like without false color filtering. I wonder how close they get with those techniques to the real thing.

sramsay• 14 years ago

They're using Instagram filters. ;)

vhf• 14 years ago

Have you seen it at full res or not ?

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/674898main_pia16013-full_...

(To me, it does not look like iPhone anymore.)

vladd• 14 years ago

>> The bandwidth from Curiosity directly to Earth is about 8 kb/s. Curiosity has a high bandwidth link to the Mars Odyssey Orbiter, a Mars satellite, which has a 256 kb/s link to Earth.

The early pictures are from a low resolution camera with a clear dust cover still attached. This camera is used to determine if Curiosity is about to land in a crater. A higher resolution camera will be activated later. <<

(taken from http://www.quora.com/NASA/Why-dont-we-have-more-color-images... )

mtgx• 14 years ago

I'm hoping Larry Page's Planetary Resources will use Google Fiber for transmitting from the asteroids.

moe• 14 years ago

The bandwidth from Curiosity directly to Earth is about 8 kb/s

For what it's worth, just about 15 years ago that was the bandwidth that you could expect from consumer internet and BBS connections on earth.

And now we're doing it to Mars. Boggles the mind.

H_L3• 14 years ago

While yes, the original pictures from the low res camera look bad, the new raw pictures from the higher-resolution cameras aren't really that much better. Better than the images from the iPhone 1, probably. But better than Viking 1 images from 1976? Honestly, it doesn't look like it.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Mars_Viki...

Just look at the detail per pixel. It's amazing. You can see tiny details in the sand. It's looks like if you took an image on a 20 megapixel DSLR with a high-quality lens, then scaled the image down to web size. The resolution isn't higher than a camera-phone, but the detail is remarkably better. And that's from nearly 40 years ago.

JunkDNA• 14 years ago

This is a great, detailed description about what it's like to do image processing from a space probe on Mars

http://cdn.oreilly.com/radar/2012/08/Beautiful_Data_Chapter3...

It's from O'Reilly's "Beautiful Data", made available free in honor of the current mars mission.

The short answer (covered in that document) is actually that the sensors have to be hardened for space use and are not consumer grade. They are incredibly expensive to produce.

ricardobeat• 14 years ago

These are still from the navigation cameras.

The main camera, not yet deployed, can take 1600x1200 full-color pictures and HD video at 10fps. There's actually two of it, so it can also make 3D images/video. Other features are wide/telephoto lens, panorama stitching and 8GB flash storage.

Before complaining about resolution, this is like having a GoPro 3D on Mars, it has plenty of detail.

One of the articles mentions that the cameras are provided by the same manufacturer as the Viking missions, so they must certainly have improved. Expect some awesome images in the coming months!

More info: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/instruments/cameras/mas..., http://msl-scicorner.jpl.nasa.gov/Instruments/Mastcam/, http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/news/msl20110531.html

pramanat• 14 years ago

Looks like the image was stitched together from multiple images, judging by the jagged edges at the top and the "fold" to the right of middle in the image. Very neat, nonetheless.

ereckers• 14 years ago

I think that's why it's described as "two" high resolution images and they're only providing a single file to view.

mattacular• 14 years ago

This was taken by the camera whose sole purpose is to assist with navigation. That is why its B&W, low quality, and stitched. The main camera system will produce full color images that I assume will be much higher quality.

fletchowns• 14 years ago

Are there any examples of a picture taken on Earth with the main camera?

InclinedPlane2• 14 years ago

I haven't found any full resolution examples, but there's a resized sample here: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/instruments/cameras/mas...

capnrefsmmat• 14 years ago

Here's a full-resolution picture taken by the descent imager as the heat shield fell away:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/pia16021.ht...

The descent imager uses the same sensor as the main mast cameras, but with different optics.

hammock• 14 years ago

How far away are those hills in the back? I'm guessing they're farther away than we might think, due to Mars not having much of an atmosphere to reduce visibility.

awolf• 14 years ago

I think you think its a lot farther than it actually is.

My estimate would be about a mile.

ChuckMcM• 14 years ago

From a topographic picture of Gale crater [1] with the landing area of Curiosity circled, its about 25km to the nearest crater wall or slightly more than 15 miles to the crater wall.

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/Topograp...

LoganCale• 14 years ago

I believe that's the crater rim, and the crater is 96 miles in diameter, with the landing site closer to the edge than the center.

gdw2• 14 years ago

Has something been whited-out in the bottom right corner?

ben1040• 14 years ago

I might well be wrong, but I assumed that white spot was just the sun reflecting off of that part of the rover.

grecy• 14 years ago

I had to actually stop and think "hang on, does 'sun' mean THE sun, or....".

It's cool thinking about a little robot on mars cruising around doing stuff for us, still showing reflections from THE sun.

7c8011dda3f3b• 14 years ago

Links to raw images that I posted as a comment on another article:

Navcam Left A: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/proj/msl/redops/ods/...

Navcam Right A: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/proj/msl/redops/ods/...

Coincoin• 14 years ago

Nice! You can actually use those to make pairs of stereoscopic images. You can even see features not otherwise visible from the raw pictures. It's a shame the left and right camera distances are not the same as a human eye ; it makes the 3D effect a little too strong. I guess it gives their nav software a better depth resolution that way.

fooey• 14 years ago

i put this together quick as an example: http://i.imgur.com/bNlkY.jpg

thetrb• 14 years ago

Looks pretty boring around there. I hope they can find something interesting somewhere around that area. I read that over the whole mission the rover is supposed to drive only ~20 miles, so there better be something interesting to observe :)

yellowbkpk• 14 years ago

There is an IMMENSE amount of stuff to observe and learn about this boring part of Mars. Geology, water formations, rock formations, sand composition, atmosphere, etc.

Imagine if you lived on another planet and sent a probe that landed in the middle of the desert in Africa. You wouldn't exclaim "that looks boring!", you'd say "awesome, so much data to crunch!"

jakeonthemove3• 14 years ago

well, what do you expect, red trees and volcanoes :-)? Mars is kind of a dead planet, and the most interesting things you can see are the dust devils and maybe/hopefully, ice formations.

jcarreiro8• 14 years ago

  > the most interesting things you can see are the dust
  > devils and maybe/hopefully, ice formations

For the geologists who designed the scientific instruments on Curiosity, the most interesting things they can see are rocks. Lots of rocks, from different periods in the geologic history of Mars.

This is why Gale Crater was picked as the rover's landing site; there are several nearby features, including Aeolis Mons, that will provide the rover with an opportunity to date and investigate rock layers from different eras.

magsafe• 14 years ago

On the NASA site, look for the "Full Size" link, then right click on the image and set it as your desktop wallpaper. Fits perfectly.

TomGullen• 14 years ago

I absolutely love this stuff. The photos to me are strangely eerie, and even perhaps a little sinister.

I have trouble comprehending the size of other planets, photos like these make me feel uneasy (in an exciting way) because they are strikingly similar to landscapes we might find here on earth - yet it's a completely different planet! I'm no longer looking at mars as a red circle as shown in textbooks, but now as vast unseen landscapes that have never been explored before - a new perspective and a new age of discovery and I can't wait to see what else happens in my life.

It's also a stunning achievement. As I lie in bed looking up into the darkness, a boundless expanse of tens of millions of miles of absolutely nothing lies between me, and a small man made robot with the martian wind gusting and whistling gently over it. A robot that is cautiously making small movements, buzzing and whirring going about it's business with no one there to hear the sounds or see the movements it's making. A machine who's intentions are totally pure - it's sole purpose is simply to learn. A small beacon in a far-reaching expanse of barrenness and nothingness.

One thing I found recently I'd never heard of before is 'Venera 13': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera_13

A Russian rover that landed on Venus in 1981 - designed to last the harsh environment of Venus for 32 minutes but actually lasted 127 minutes. An extraordinary engineering achievement to have a rover go from freezing space temperatures to temperatures of over 450c.

And it managed to transmit images of the surface: http://mo-www.harvard.edu/microobs/guestobserverportal/Galil...

Absolutely stunning, and in some ways even more eerie and provocative to me than the Mars pictures as the environment it briefly operated in is far more hostile and as time was so limited the images are even more precious.

stuartcw• 14 years ago

That's exactly how I felt at 7 in 1975 : http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/viking/viking-20060714.htm...

losvedir• 14 years ago

That image of Venus is wonderful, thanks! I hadn't seen it before. I, too, think this is fascinating stuff. Another cool image comes from Titan, one of Saturn's moons, which we managed to land a probe on.[1]

[1] http://www.esa.int/esaMI/Cassini-Huygens/SEMC8Q71Y3E_0.html

aerique• 14 years ago

There's also an awesome video of that descent: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-BwcDNsbmw

Or: http://www.esa.int/esaMI/Cassini-Huygens/SEMKVQOFGLE_1.html (check the hires download!)

rwhitman• 14 years ago

Personally I think Venus is the more interesting planet to be exploring

seanalltogether• 14 years ago

I wonder if eating away at the current atmosphere of venus is more or less technically challenging then the task of creating an atmosphere from scratch on Mars. Since Venus also has way more mass, I'm guessing humans would feel more comfortable there then on Mars.

SudarshanP• 14 years ago

Geoffrey Landis suggested that: Although the surface of Venus is an extremely hostile environment, at about 50 kilometers above the surface the atmosphere of Venus is the most earth like environment (other than Earth itself) in the solar system. It is proposed here that in the near term, human exploration of Venus could take place from aerostat vehicles in the atmosphere, and that in the long term, permanent settlements could be made in the form of cities designed to float at about fifty kilometer altitude in the atmosphere of Venus. Source: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/2003002...

jakeonthemove3• 14 years ago

The Venus photos are simply awesome (the probe definitely deserves more recognition :-)), as are those from Mars. It's a shame we can't just hitch a ride to either of the planets to explore them and see them with our own eyes...

Wingman4l73• 14 years ago

The Venera program is definitely one of the "unsung heroes" of planetary exploration.

Perhaps the best resource for surface images of Venus (along with fascinating image reconstruction) is Don P. Mitchell's page: http://mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogVenus.htm

Another fascinating tidbit: the Soviets also performed the first (and to date, only) deployment of a balloon probe on another planet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerobot#The_Venus_Vega_balloons

tomfakes2• 14 years ago

I was going to mention Don - he's a friend of a friend - and the book he's writing about the Russian Venus program. There's a lot of awesome stuff here that almost no-one knows about.

jl6• 14 years ago

Wow, this is the first I've heard of the balloon mission. I wonder how long the balloons stayed afloat after the batteries ran down...

jcarreiro8• 14 years ago

  > I have trouble comprehending the size of other planets

I'm not sure this will help, but the surface area of Mars is about 1/3 that of Earth. Given that roughly 2/3 of the Earth's surface is covered by water, one can think of the surface of Mars as being roughly equivalent in area to the entire land area of the Earth.

6ren• 14 years ago

I find Saturn's moon Titan most earth-like, in that it has liquids, forming rivers and lakes - "geological" features missing from most (all?) other local planets and moons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakes_of_Titan; also http://www.world-science.net/othernews/120723_titan.htm; and geological analysis (video) http://www.space.com/16674-rivers-on-saturn-s-moon-titan-puz...

alexsb92• 14 years ago

I can completely correlate to the uneasiness brought by truly realizing the scale of things.

If you do like video games, one that had such an intended effect on me was the first Mass Effect. There are a number of side missions where you descend onto planets in a multi-terrain vehicle and are supposed to check some things out (you can get out of the rover as well). Although for the most part the planets are barren (much like Mars), I found them incredibly effective at sending the scale message across. The most incredible one though, was a side mission on the Moon, with Earth right up above you. Though the scale wasn't 100% accurate, it still made for one of the most impressive moments in video games for me.

sown• 14 years ago

> I absolutely love this stuff. The photos to me are strangely eerie, and even perhaps a little sinister.

It's actually reassuring to me. It's rocks. We understand rocks. I'm surrounded by them. There may not be a blade of grass, a gasp of air or a friendly face to greet us but at least there are rocks.

dgregd• 14 years ago

Without caption someone may think that pictures were taken on some Earth desert. It is surprising that mountains look quite "normal".

rokhayakebe• 14 years ago

To me seeing Mars looking like somewhere on Earth just changes everything.

arturadib• 14 years ago

In cased you missed this released by NASA in July, it's also amazing: HD panoramic view of Mars by the Opportunity rover: http://www.panoramas.dk/mars/greeley-haven.html

hybrid11• 14 years ago

There's a good stitched together panoramic view of all those images at Gizmodo - http://gizmodo.com/5932952/curiosity-opens-her-eyes-for-the-...

sheraz• 14 years ago

I thought it was interesting to learn about the different ways we get data back from mars. Excerpt from [1]:

The data rate direct-to-Earth varies from about 500 bits per second to 32,000 bits per second (roughly half as fast as a standard home modem). The data rate to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is selected automatically and continuously during communications and can be as high as 2 million bits per second. The data rate to the Odyssey orbiter is a selectable 128,000 or 256,000 bits per second (4-8 times faster than a home modem).

[1] http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/communicationwithearth/...

aortega• 14 years ago

Some one has a link with more technical data about the communication stack? algorithms, modulation, etc.

sanxiyn• 14 years ago

Some information is available here, including variable bit rate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electra_(radio)

hypnocode• 14 years ago

Really brings home the fact that we have reached beyond the place where life sprung up, and are probably getting ready to move beyond the earth.

ck2• 14 years ago

The highlight of my day is to watch the NASA daily press briefings each day this week.

(1pm EST or 10am PST on all NASA channels)

tomkit• 14 years ago

Random tangent, but I wonder what procedures NASA goES through to scrub all living organisms from the robot itself if one of their aims is to see if they can detect life on the martian planet.

kyleslattery• 14 years ago

You might find some info here: http://planetaryprotection.nasa.gov/

GregBuchholz• 14 years ago

"NASA uses a variety of methods to measure, control and reduce spacecraft microbial contamination for planetary protection purposes. Assembly of spacecraft hardware is carefully controlled and often takes place in clean-room facilities using, aseptic techniques in order to meet planetary protection requirements. Dry heat microbial reduction techniques first used on the Viking spacecraft are still used today..."

http://planetaryprotection.nasa.gov/methods/

jonesbb• 14 years ago

NASA adheres to planetary protection procedures and requirements. For MSL...

"Selected components were heated to temperatures ranging from 110 to 146 degrees Celsius (230 to 295 degrees Fahrenheit) for durations up to 144 hours. Tools and other equipment that could come into contact with rover hardware were also cleaned routinely with alcohol wipes."

More details here: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/pdfs/MSL_Plan_Prot_FactShe...

kamaal• 14 years ago

On the same lines.

Why can't we send some robust organic life to Mars and dump it there, Just to see what happens?

bialecki• 14 years ago

Random question: Is it silent on Mars? I'm looking at this picture and can't help but wonder what it sounds like. Just curious if Martian weather tends to be windy or calm.

skeletonjelly3• 14 years ago

They didn't pack a microphone! Bastards! :P

Considering the propensity for dust storms I'm going to say windy. But the atmosphere is thinner, so this makes it harder to hear? Or quieter?

jcarreiro8• 14 years ago

  > But the atmosphere is thinner, so this makes it harder to
  > hear? Or quieter?

Sound intensity for a plane wave is given by the equation $I = \xi^2 \omega^2 c \rho$. Here $\xi$ is the particle displacement (the amplitude of our wave), $\omega$ is the angular frequency, and $c \rho$, typically called $Z$, is the characteristic acoustic impedance, where $c$ is the speed of sound and $\rho$ is the density of the medium.

Given that the speed of sound is roughly independent of pressure, and keeping all other variables equal, as $\rho$ decreases, $I$ also decreases. So yes, on Mars, sounds are much quieter.

Sources: http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/672/what-is-the-r...

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

InclinedPlane2• 14 years ago

There was a microphone sent to Mars once, but it was on a lander that crashed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_polar_lander#Scientific_in...

Edit: Correction, twice, one was also sent on Phoenix but due to a design defect it was not used: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_(spacecraft)#Mars_Desce...

jcarreiro8• 14 years ago

  > Is it silent on Mars?

Good question! No, it is not. See http://sprg.ssl.berkeley.edu/marsmic/sound.html for an experiment, carried on the Mars Polar Lander, which would have attempted to record the sounds of Mars. Sadly the instrument was lost along with MPL.

  > Just curious if Martian weather tends to be windy or calm

Another good question. Mars is quite windy. I don't have a reference handy, but Spirit and Opportunity recorded numerous dust devils on the Martian surface. IIRC, they sometimes saw more than one a day!

jonhendry• 14 years ago

There are winds. The wind is what would clear dust off the solar panels of the other rovers. I think that is what allowed them to run so long - the winds were stronger than expected, and cleaned off the solar panels better than expected, so more power was available. If I'm not mistaken, the engineers originally expected the solar panels to get covered by dust in a matter of months, at which point the rovers would stop working.

zerostar072• 14 years ago

Related: Sound recording from the Huygens probe descending on Titan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36ffV-CI3Mo

powerslave12r2• 14 years ago

In case anyone's curious-

List of missions to Mars: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_Mars

desireco422• 14 years ago

To sum up sentiment of many here: NASA should have got Canon as a sponsor and give us some decent images.

It's ridiculous to travel across the system and not being able to send good images.

Difwif• 14 years ago

Okay I've heard this from a couple people already and I think this needs to be said. For one these are the Navigation camera shots and have no reason to be any higher quality. The craft has only been on the ground for 5 days and hasn't initialized all 17 of its on board cameras yet. The one in particular interest to us is the MastCam which features true-color 1600x1200 stereoscopic CCD's, can shoot 720p video at 10 fps, can telescope out to objects seven football fields away, and detect a wide range of wavelengths. And before you complain about it being only 2 Mp or that it can only do snails pace HD that your camera phone can achieve I ask you to think about how resilient these cameras must be to the environment along with how slow our communication speeds are with the rover. With a max uplink of 2Mb/s for 8 minutes per day and a 32kb/s connection otherwise, 3D 1080p at 60 fps really doesn't seem worth the network resources it will hog from more important mission data.

desireco422• 14 years ago

People who support NASA and it's projects are the reason why you should make room for good cameras. Even scientists are people and would be motivated by good pictures. Having a sense of how it is on Mars is whole point of this and good pictures provide that.

Also arguments about how it would be hard to add good camera, simply is not true. I agree about uplink and understand.

nymrulez• 14 years ago

It's time to put men on Mars and not just robots. It's embarrassing that in the 40+ yrs since Armstrong we haven't gotten anywhere else.

hk_kh• 14 years ago

Woosh.. really it's time to put men on Mars, or is it just "for the lulz"?

Robots are meant to provide scientific data about Mars ecosystem, explore further on the surface and so on. What does a men, right now, add there? Nothing. Just danger and wasting money.

Now, investigating technology that could put a man on Mars, that's interesting. But not just for setting foot on the surface, just for bringing to reality new tech that allows that.

Curiosity is an achievement itself. Great technology, and for now, greatly executed. How many different proves went to the moon before a man could set its foot on there?

It's not embarassing that in 40 years "we" haven't gotten anywhere else. To me it's embarassing that in 40 years we do not have yet sustainable way of keeping life on our own planet. Energy, on Earth and beyond, it's what could set a new standard for human race.

redwood• 14 years ago

Wait, so this is just one photo right? I see a range... assuming this is the edge of the crater? I don't think Mt. Sharp is visible here?

y4m4• 14 years ago

This is just blows my mind! - Hopefully one day we will walk on that surface and have a thriving colony.

jsilence• 14 years ago

Rocks!

zerostar072• 14 years ago

Another random question: In pictures like this: http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/science/800px-Op...

the rover is in a clean chamber, with the staff wearing suits. Why is the clean chamber needed for assembly?

jcarreiro8• 14 years ago

This is part of NASA's Planetary Protection directive [1]. Their goal is to ensure that we do not inadvertently contaminate the pristine environments that we visit with our spacecraft. If we did, we would be destroying an invaluable scientific resource!

They are also responsible for ensuring that samples returned to Earth from outer space are handled safely.

[1] http://planetaryprotection.nasa.gov

vacri• 14 years ago

Hollywood movies to the contrary, archeological research is very concerned with avoiding contaminating the subject with crap from the researchers. Imagine if life was found on mars... and we introduced the diseases that killed it.

hessenwolf• 14 years ago

Why are they in black and white?

First full-resolution images of the Martian surface

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