HiRISE High-Res Images From Mars - Find the filing cabinet!
September 30, 2006 11:09 AM   Subscribe

The HiRISE camera is one of eleven instruments on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Yesterday the first few images were downloaded from the MRO.
posted by carsonb (16 comments total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
Awesome!
posted by interrobang at 11:11 AM on September 30, 2006


Part of the camera's mission is to help check out landing sites for the Phoenix Mission lander. Wanna get involved in the search for water on Mars? The HiROC team is taking the MARSOWEB approach and encouraging public participation via NASA's Clickworkers program. The Clickworkers link is not working today. Check back tomorrow. Sorry!
posted by carsonb at 11:17 AM on September 30, 2006


crap. there are six 'science instruments', three 'engineering instruments', and two 'science facility experiments'---not eleven instruments. mea culpa.
posted by carsonb at 11:23 AM on September 30, 2006


Cool post. Thank you.
posted by jiawen at 11:39 AM on September 30, 2006


One gets the immediate impression, looking at these, of how deeply and pervasively cratered the surface of Mars really is. It has been a long time, with a very thin dry atmosphere, that things have been falling there. Not the kind of place at all that remembers rain.
posted by paulsc at 11:50 AM on September 30, 2006


Well first impressions don't often give you the truth.
posted by Science! at 12:34 PM on September 30, 2006


You are so right, paulsc. It seems to be cratered at every magnification. Is the last image on this page really the entire planet? I scarcely can believe it. What a bombardment.
posted by jamjam at 12:37 PM on September 30, 2006


Wow, it looks a lot like, er, mars.
posted by delmoi at 12:41 PM on September 30, 2006


The zoom feature rocks.
posted by exlotuseater at 2:09 PM on September 30, 2006


Hey, I can see my house! ; >

(actually, i'd love to see a martian house, or something)
posted by amberglow at 3:06 PM on September 30, 2006


It's full of... stars
Thank you, thank you
posted by hal9k at 3:28 PM on September 30, 2006


It seems to be cratered at every magnification.

just to clarify (further resolve?), the pictures are at about 1px/ft.
posted by carsonb at 4:14 PM on September 30, 2006


Is that an image of a monolithic koala to the right on the link labelled "first"? I'm seeing alot of nipples, too.
posted by eegphalanges at 8:28 PM on September 30, 2006


Meh. Needs women.

I'm so glad we've had such a run of good luck with Mars, which after the loss of Phobos 1 & 2, Mars Observer, Nozomi, Mars Climate Orbiter, Mars Polar Lander, and Deep Space 2 seemed star-cross'd.

Among MRO's first jobs, natch, is checking out the landing sites of prior failed missions like Beagle2 using HiRise. It was just two years ago that they gave up on interpreting pixels from the MGS camera. Using a special technique, that camera was capable of 50cm resolution in only one direction (1.5m in the other). HiRise is 30cm both directions. Of course, the CRISM camera is something else entirely. Not the finest resolution, but with 544 color channels, we'll be seeing a whole new Mars.

how deeply and pervasively cratered the surface is... It has been a long time ... that things have been falling there. Not the kind of place at all that remembers rain.

At the same time, it's telling how worn most of the craters look. It's amazing what even a little atmosphere will do, compared with the Moon.

Well first impressions don't often give you the truth.

Well, you know ... Craters only get one chance to make a first impression.
posted by dhartung at 8:33 PM on September 30, 2006


Stay tuned for Google Mars.
posted by CynicalKnight at 4:39 PM on October 1, 2006


Google Mars
posted by grateful at 10:43 AM on October 2, 2006


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