7 ms·

First surface photo is in too! https://i.imgur.com/C2s1job.jpg https://i.imgur.com/C2s1job.jpg

by huhtenberg 6y ago

gillytech 6y ago
The shadow features are fantastic!
kaycebasques 6y ago
N00b question: why is it black & white?
- handedness 6y ago
  The world is a complicated place, Hobbes.[1] The lower "HazCams" hazard avoidance cameras (which captured those initial photos) are there to detect hazards (rocks, trenches, etc.). They are stereoscopic, lightweight, and high resolution. My guess is that using color sensors would have either increased the 3D mapping precision or added weight/power/bandwidth requirements, or otherwise been less robust in that environment. Those cameras were also pre-deployed for the landing phase and likely transmit more quickly due to the lower data information. The other cameras were shielded for the landing phase. The navigation and other cameras are in color, and I expect we'll be seeing better images shortly. [1] This comes to mind whenever a question like that is asked: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CWM1zDcmWXs/TroD0VsX4WI/AAAAAAAAAVA/Jc5bN5xSTkc/s1600/ch930919.gif http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CWM1zDcmWXs/TroD0VsX4WI/AAAAAAAAAV...
  - jxcl 6y ago
    > My guess is that using color sensors would have either increased the 3D mapping precision or added weight/power/bandwidth requirements, or otherwise been less robust in that environment. I think you meant to say decreased? In which case I think you would be correct! Camera pixels are made up of these things called photosites which don't by themselves record color, only brightness. In order to record color information, the photosites are placed behind a Bayer filter[1], which effectively reduces the resolution of the camera by 3, because in order to get the color of a pixel you need its red, green and blue component. Bayer filters also frequently have a small blurring filter in front of them to make sure that nearby photosites with different color filters get the information they need. If you're looking for the highest resolution image possible, black and white is the way to go! [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter
    - m4rtink 6y ago
      That's why "real" space cameras usually have color filters on a carousel before the sensor - they take 3 pictures each with different filter and BAM, color! That way you get high regulation as well as color. You can also have some special (infrared, ultraviolet, etc.) Filters on the carousel, not just RGB.
      - dylan604 6y ago
        >and BAM, color! and BAM, false color! FTFY
    - handedness 6y ago
      > I think you meant to say decreased? I did, thank you. I think my brain had already skipped ahead to the added weight/complexity concept while my fingers were stuck on that part of the sentence. I should probably read things after I type them...
  - whuffman 6y ago
    FYI - the HazCams on Perseverance are in fact in color (this is new, they were black and white on Curiosity)! Stereo precision was a concern based on the switch to color sensors, so there was some algorithmic work done to make sure it wouldn't cause an issue. (Source: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11214-020-00765-9 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11214-020-00765-9 - "The Mars 2020 Navcams and Hazcams offer three primary improvements over MER and MSL. The first improvement is an upgrade to a detector with 3-channel, red/green/blue (RGB) color capability that will enable better contextual imaging capabilities than the previous engineering cameras, which only had a black/white capability.")
    - handedness 6y ago
      Interesting, I didn't know that. I knew the Cachecam was color, but somehow missed that detail, despite actually seeing the camera in person at one point...
    - m4rtink 6y ago
      Wow, real upgrades all around compared to Curiosity! What are they going to do next ? Put on board a solar powered Mars helicopter ?? ;-)
  - handedness 6y ago
    And by "increased" I meant the "decreased" kind...
- kube-system 6y ago
  Here's the answer from NASA: https://youtu.be/gm0b_ijaYMQ?t=6240 https://youtu.be/gm0b_ijaYMQ?t=6240
- POiNTx 6y ago
  My guess is lower image size, which means image can get transferred faster.
  - Azrael3000 6y ago
    That is most certainly correct. They also mentioned that these are images from engineering cameras, so they are normally responsible for navigation. The real HD footage will come in over the next hours as the bandwidth just is not large enough. Elon Musk needs to provide some Starlink sats for a better connection.
    - _Microft 6y ago
      Starlink would most certainly be of little direct use here. What I could imagine is having Starlink satellites around Mars that allow to route data from rovers anywhere on the planet to a dedicated high-performance communications platform that handles communication with Earth.
      - teraflop 6y ago
        In fact that's exactly what they're doing: the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is serving as a communications relay, as it did for previous landers. It's just that since there have never been more than a handful of spacecraft active on Mars at any given time, there's currently no point in spending huge amounts of money to launch a whole constellation of satellites for continuous coverage.
        m4rtink 6y ago
        Could be still a nice exercise if someone could compute how many Starlinks could a Falcon Heavy throw to Mars transfer orbit & if they could be able to actually capture into Martian orbit by their default means of propulsion (do they actually have any high thrust engines ?).
        Sharlin 6y ago
        Not only the MRO, but other orbiting assets as well, particularly NASA's MAVEN and ESA's TGO. Even the venerable 2001 Mars Odyssey is still used as needed, I think.
- smilespray 6y ago
  It's from a hazard camera, which is not used for main photography. Better images will come soon.
  - ehsankia 6y ago
    Worth noting that these first pictures are sent in the first seconds after touchdown, you can even still see the dust in the air from the landing (even if it was craned down to reduce dust). It also explains the very low resolution in general, they want to get confirmation ASAP, no time for high quality high resolution images.
    - nerfhammer 6y ago
      would dust stay in the air longer or shorter than on Earth? also is it technically correct to call the Martian atmosphere "air"?
      - js2 6y ago
        Miriam Webster says yes to part two: > the mixture of invisible odorless tasteless gases (such as nitrogen and oxygen) that surrounds the earth > also : the equivalent mix of gases on another planet I would naively guess yes to part one but it's complicated: Mars has less gravity, much less atmospheric pressure, colder temps, and greater gravitational influence from its moons than Earth. Wikipedia says the mechanism of the planet's dust storms isn't well understood. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Mars#Dust_and_other_dynamic_features https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Mars#Dust_and_ot...
      - ajross 6y ago
        Dust falls much, much faster on Mars. The density of Mars's surface atmosphere is ~160x lower than on Earth.
        mrec 6y ago
        Right. One "proof" advanced by Moon landing conspiracy theorists was that dust settled much faster in videos than it should if it were really in Lunar gravity.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- hiharryhere 6y ago
  I heard on the live stream that it was taken by a camera that is used by the driving system. Guessing its black and white/high contrast to help see rocks etc. And probably much lower res, smaller file size too for transferring.
- ijustlovemath 6y ago
  Just an enthusiast, no real answers, but here's a guess: These are hazard cameras, designed to be inputs into the guidance algorithms on board. It might make sense for such a camera to be B/W to reduce on board processing required. There's also a glass cover on them, and a lot of dust from the landing, so that may be obscuring true color if the cameras do in fact take color images. Also they may have just transmitted a lower quality B/W image to get something back to Earth quickly, since higher res images take longer to uplink.
- neals 6y ago
  It's an "engineering cam" that's not really meant for taking nice pictures, more to see where the thing is going. There'll be some better Instagram selfies soon though.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- robinjfisher 6y ago
  This was explained on the feed. It's from a lower-res safety camera mainly used for object avoidance on the ground. High definition images will be available later.
  - interestica 6y ago
    https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/raw-images/ https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/raw-images/ It seems that NASA is being awesome and making all raw images available as they get them. So far just the 2-ish.
- nwallin 6y ago
  Other posters have pointed out that it's the hazard avoidance camera, but they haven't said why the hazard avoidance camera is black and white. When you do computer vision, the first step you do is convert your color image into a black and white image, and run your CV algorithms on the black and white image. This is because when you're looking at objects and shapes and stuff, it's contrast that tells you where the boundaries between things are. This is true even in a human world of human objects, which tend to be many colored. It's even more true on Mars where basically everything is varying shades of orange. So having color doesn't help a whole lot, and you also have to do the additional step of converting the color image to black and white, which takes CPU power and adds latency. Remember, the purpose is hazard avoidance- latency is bad. Additionally, color camera sensors aren't actually color sensors. They're black and white sensors. In front of every pixel on the black and white sensor is a filter that is either red, green, or blue. Pixels are grouped into sets of four, and there are two pixels with green filters, one pixel with a blue filter, and one filter with a red filter. (sometimes one of the green filters is omitted, giving red, green, blue, and b&w, or sometimes one of the green filters is a filter that allows IR, or something like that.) So if you have a 16MP camera, the camera has 8M green, 4M red, and 4M blue pixels. This means two things; first of all, if you just wanted a black and white image in the first place, a color sensor gives less detail than the equivalent black and white sensor, and second, you need to do additional processing to convert the raw output from the sensor into an image that's usable for anything. The additional processing adds latency.
  - kharak 6y ago
    Thank you for the explanation. That was highly interesting. Does anyone else know if the human eye does perceive color directly? Is this at all technically possible? And if yes, why aren't we doing it with cameras?
    - natosaichek 6y ago
      What do you mean by "directly"? Color is a human abstraction over the reception intensity of certain wavelengths of light.
ArtWomb 6y ago
Greetings from Jezero Crater! Really doesn't look alien. RLike the high mesa of New Mexico sans flora ;)
interestica 6y ago
NASA is making the raw images of everything available: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/raw-images/ https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/raw-images/
- ape4 6y ago
  Today's images are from Sol 0. Zero-based counting rules.
- SethTro 6y ago
  You can see what this page looked like for Curiousity at https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/?page=0&per_page=25&order=pub_date+desc&search=&category=51%3A176&fancybox=true&url_suffix=%3Fsite%3Dmsl https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/?page=0&per_page... Can't wait till they start posting raw images :)
  - interestica 6y ago
    Thanks for that! I just found this especially awesome shot of Curiosity: https://mars.nasa.gov/resources/21929/curiositys-dusty-selfie-at-duluth/?site=msl https://mars.nasa.gov/resources/21929/curiositys-dusty-selfi... It's very high res. You can see the holes/damage on the wheels -- Perseverance will have new wheels because of it. And also, won't have the 'morse code spelling' on the wheels either. It's amazing that this kind of damage/wear couldn't have been predicted in tests. The amount of dust that has settled on top in what appears to be predictable channels is also interesting. Looks like they have more than 300 000 images on the raw site: https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw-images/?order=sol+desc%2Cinstrument_sort+asc%2Csample_type_sort+asc%2C+date_taken+desc&per_page=50&page=0&mission=msl https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw-images/?order=sol+d...

First surface photo is in too! https://i.imgur.com/C2s1job.jpg https://i.imgur.com/C2s1job.jpg

gillytech 6y ago

The shadow features are fantastic!

kaycebasques 6y ago

N00b question: why is it black & white?

handedness 6y ago
The world is a complicated place, Hobbes.[1] The lower "HazCams" hazard avoidance cameras (which captured those initial photos) are there to detect hazards (rocks, trenches, etc.). They are stereoscopic, lightweight, and high resolution. My guess is that using color sensors would have either increased the 3D mapping precision or added weight/power/bandwidth requirements, or otherwise been less robust in that environment. Those cameras were also pre-deployed for the landing phase and likely transmit more quickly due to the lower data information. The other cameras were shielded for the landing phase. The navigation and other cameras are in color, and I expect we'll be seeing better images shortly. [1] This comes to mind whenever a question like that is asked: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CWM1zDcmWXs/TroD0VsX4WI/AAAAAAAAAVA/Jc5bN5xSTkc/s1600/ch930919.gif http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CWM1zDcmWXs/TroD0VsX4WI/AAAAAAAAAV...
- jxcl 6y ago
  > My guess is that using color sensors would have either increased the 3D mapping precision or added weight/power/bandwidth requirements, or otherwise been less robust in that environment. I think you meant to say decreased? In which case I think you would be correct! Camera pixels are made up of these things called photosites which don't by themselves record color, only brightness. In order to record color information, the photosites are placed behind a Bayer filter[1], which effectively reduces the resolution of the camera by 3, because in order to get the color of a pixel you need its red, green and blue component. Bayer filters also frequently have a small blurring filter in front of them to make sure that nearby photosites with different color filters get the information they need. If you're looking for the highest resolution image possible, black and white is the way to go! [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter
  - m4rtink 6y ago
    That's why "real" space cameras usually have color filters on a carousel before the sensor - they take 3 pictures each with different filter and BAM, color! That way you get high regulation as well as color. You can also have some special (infrared, ultraviolet, etc.) Filters on the carousel, not just RGB.
    - dylan604 6y ago
      >and BAM, color! and BAM, false color! FTFY
  - handedness 6y ago
    > I think you meant to say decreased? I did, thank you. I think my brain had already skipped ahead to the added weight/complexity concept while my fingers were stuck on that part of the sentence. I should probably read things after I type them...
- whuffman 6y ago
  FYI - the HazCams on Perseverance are in fact in color (this is new, they were black and white on Curiosity)! Stereo precision was a concern based on the switch to color sensors, so there was some algorithmic work done to make sure it wouldn't cause an issue. (Source: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11214-020-00765-9 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11214-020-00765-9 - "The Mars 2020 Navcams and Hazcams offer three primary improvements over MER and MSL. The first improvement is an upgrade to a detector with 3-channel, red/green/blue (RGB) color capability that will enable better contextual imaging capabilities than the previous engineering cameras, which only had a black/white capability.")
  - handedness 6y ago
    Interesting, I didn't know that. I knew the Cachecam was color, but somehow missed that detail, despite actually seeing the camera in person at one point...
  - m4rtink 6y ago
    Wow, real upgrades all around compared to Curiosity! What are they going to do next ? Put on board a solar powered Mars helicopter ?? ;-)
- handedness 6y ago
  And by "increased" I meant the "decreased" kind...
kube-system 6y ago
Here's the answer from NASA: https://youtu.be/gm0b_ijaYMQ?t=6240 https://youtu.be/gm0b_ijaYMQ?t=6240
POiNTx 6y ago
My guess is lower image size, which means image can get transferred faster.
- Azrael3000 6y ago
  That is most certainly correct. They also mentioned that these are images from engineering cameras, so they are normally responsible for navigation. The real HD footage will come in over the next hours as the bandwidth just is not large enough. Elon Musk needs to provide some Starlink sats for a better connection.
  - _Microft 6y ago
    Starlink would most certainly be of little direct use here. What I could imagine is having Starlink satellites around Mars that allow to route data from rovers anywhere on the planet to a dedicated high-performance communications platform that handles communication with Earth.
    - teraflop 6y ago
      In fact that's exactly what they're doing: the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is serving as a communications relay, as it did for previous landers. It's just that since there have never been more than a handful of spacecraft active on Mars at any given time, there's currently no point in spending huge amounts of money to launch a whole constellation of satellites for continuous coverage.
      - m4rtink 6y ago
        Could be still a nice exercise if someone could compute how many Starlinks could a Falcon Heavy throw to Mars transfer orbit & if they could be able to actually capture into Martian orbit by their default means of propulsion (do they actually have any high thrust engines ?).
      - Sharlin 6y ago
        Not only the MRO, but other orbiting assets as well, particularly NASA's MAVEN and ESA's TGO. Even the venerable 2001 Mars Odyssey is still used as needed, I think.
smilespray 6y ago
It's from a hazard camera, which is not used for main photography. Better images will come soon.
- ehsankia 6y ago
  Worth noting that these first pictures are sent in the first seconds after touchdown, you can even still see the dust in the air from the landing (even if it was craned down to reduce dust). It also explains the very low resolution in general, they want to get confirmation ASAP, no time for high quality high resolution images.
  - nerfhammer 6y ago
    would dust stay in the air longer or shorter than on Earth? also is it technically correct to call the Martian atmosphere "air"?
    - js2 6y ago
      Miriam Webster says yes to part two: > the mixture of invisible odorless tasteless gases (such as nitrogen and oxygen) that surrounds the earth > also : the equivalent mix of gases on another planet I would naively guess yes to part one but it's complicated: Mars has less gravity, much less atmospheric pressure, colder temps, and greater gravitational influence from its moons than Earth. Wikipedia says the mechanism of the planet's dust storms isn't well understood. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Mars#Dust_and_other_dynamic_features https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Mars#Dust_and_ot...
    - ajross 6y ago
      Dust falls much, much faster on Mars. The density of Mars's surface atmosphere is ~160x lower than on Earth.
      - mrec 6y ago
        Right. One "proof" advanced by Moon landing conspiracy theorists was that dust settled much faster in videos than it should if it were really in Lunar gravity.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
hiharryhere 6y ago
I heard on the live stream that it was taken by a camera that is used by the driving system. Guessing its black and white/high contrast to help see rocks etc. And probably much lower res, smaller file size too for transferring.
ijustlovemath 6y ago
Just an enthusiast, no real answers, but here's a guess: These are hazard cameras, designed to be inputs into the guidance algorithms on board. It might make sense for such a camera to be B/W to reduce on board processing required. There's also a glass cover on them, and a lot of dust from the landing, so that may be obscuring true color if the cameras do in fact take color images. Also they may have just transmitted a lower quality B/W image to get something back to Earth quickly, since higher res images take longer to uplink.
neals 6y ago
It's an "engineering cam" that's not really meant for taking nice pictures, more to see where the thing is going. There'll be some better Instagram selfies soon though.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
robinjfisher 6y ago
This was explained on the feed. It's from a lower-res safety camera mainly used for object avoidance on the ground. High definition images will be available later.
- interestica 6y ago
  https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/raw-images/ https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/raw-images/ It seems that NASA is being awesome and making all raw images available as they get them. So far just the 2-ish.
nwallin 6y ago
Other posters have pointed out that it's the hazard avoidance camera, but they haven't said why the hazard avoidance camera is black and white. When you do computer vision, the first step you do is convert your color image into a black and white image, and run your CV algorithms on the black and white image. This is because when you're looking at objects and shapes and stuff, it's contrast that tells you where the boundaries between things are. This is true even in a human world of human objects, which tend to be many colored. It's even more true on Mars where basically everything is varying shades of orange. So having color doesn't help a whole lot, and you also have to do the additional step of converting the color image to black and white, which takes CPU power and adds latency. Remember, the purpose is hazard avoidance- latency is bad. Additionally, color camera sensors aren't actually color sensors. They're black and white sensors. In front of every pixel on the black and white sensor is a filter that is either red, green, or blue. Pixels are grouped into sets of four, and there are two pixels with green filters, one pixel with a blue filter, and one filter with a red filter. (sometimes one of the green filters is omitted, giving red, green, blue, and b&w, or sometimes one of the green filters is a filter that allows IR, or something like that.) So if you have a 16MP camera, the camera has 8M green, 4M red, and 4M blue pixels. This means two things; first of all, if you just wanted a black and white image in the first place, a color sensor gives less detail than the equivalent black and white sensor, and second, you need to do additional processing to convert the raw output from the sensor into an image that's usable for anything. The additional processing adds latency.
- kharak 6y ago
  Thank you for the explanation. That was highly interesting. Does anyone else know if the human eye does perceive color directly? Is this at all technically possible? And if yes, why aren't we doing it with cameras?
  - natosaichek 6y ago
    What do you mean by "directly"? Color is a human abstraction over the reception intensity of certain wavelengths of light.

ArtWomb 6y ago

Greetings from Jezero Crater! Really doesn't look alien. RLike the high mesa of New Mexico sans flora ;)

interestica 6y ago

NASA is making the raw images of everything available: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/raw-images/ https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/raw-images/

ape4 6y ago
Today's images are from Sol 0. Zero-based counting rules.
SethTro 6y ago
You can see what this page looked like for Curiousity at https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/?page=0&per_page=25&order=pub_date+desc&search=&category=51%3A176&fancybox=true&url_suffix=%3Fsite%3Dmsl https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/?page=0&per_page... Can't wait till they start posting raw images :)
- interestica 6y ago
  Thanks for that! I just found this especially awesome shot of Curiosity: https://mars.nasa.gov/resources/21929/curiositys-dusty-selfie-at-duluth/?site=msl https://mars.nasa.gov/resources/21929/curiositys-dusty-selfi... It's very high res. You can see the holes/damage on the wheels -- Perseverance will have new wheels because of it. And also, won't have the 'morse code spelling' on the wheels either. It's amazing that this kind of damage/wear couldn't have been predicted in tests. The amount of dust that has settled on top in what appears to be predictable channels is also interesting. Looks like they have more than 300 000 images on the raw site: https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw-images/?order=sol+desc%2Cinstrument_sort+asc%2Csample_type_sort+asc%2C+date_taken+desc&per_page=50&page=0&mission=msl https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw-images/?order=sol+d...