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Mars 360-degree panoramic view from Curiosity
- ChuckMcM 14y agoWell it doesn't look like path planning is going to be an issue for the first couple of Km :-)
- cypherpunks01 14y agoCuriosity should totally become the first extraterrestrial Street View car on mars.google.com!
- mhansen 14y agoHave a look in Google Earth. It has street view from generations of rovers ;)
- tdicola 14y agoVery cool! Does anyone else think the interactivity adds nothing and just makes looking at a big image more difficult?
- kyberias 14y agoYes, I agree.
- EternalFury 14y agoCan someone explain how/why a $2.6 billion piece of equipment appears to have cameras that can't match a $100 digital camera? I know it takes a long time for data to travel from there to here, but I am sure a lot of people wouldn't mind waiting for 1080p, full-color video footage of the red planet. Instead, we get these 1-megapixel, black-and-white shots that need to be stitched together to create a half decent panorama image. Sorry, there is probably a good technical reason for this, but I am just ignorant of it and I would appreciate an explanation.
- sunsu 14y agoSee this discussion and article from earlier today: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4360502 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4360502
- EternalFury 14y agoThanks! The reason seems to be: It's the way it was planned 10 years ago and we don't go back on planning on a project like this one.
- noonespecial 14y agoIts more than just choosing the camera 10 years ago, its having 10 years of testing of that particular camera under their belt and knowing every in and out of it. 10 years is plenty of time for any quirky behavior to emerge and be dealt with.
- jser 14y agoSeveral articles have mentioned bandwidth limitations of about 250 megabits per day, which also has to be used to send instrument data. But I haven't seen an explanation why bandwidth is so low -- is it lack of spectrum? Interference issues?
- elithrar 14y ago> But I haven't seen an explanation why bandwidth is so low -- is it lack of spectrum? Interference issues? Transmit power.
- utoku 14y agoAccording to wikipedia article, the power source is designed to create 125 watts of electrical power from 2000 watts of thermal power. (It might look inefficient, but they are using the heat in all parts of the rover.) For comparison, that might be how much your graphics card might be consuming while you are reading this article. I guess that also means it is going to move very slow.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- m_for_monkey 14y agoIntellectually stimulating, but after the first few pictures... well, there's nothing to see there, just sand and rocks. The most visually interesting thing on this panorama image is the rover itself, so I don't mind the relatively low quality. Now I'm waiting for some non-visual data. Curiosity has a lot of sensors besides the cameras.
- eta_carinae 14y agoI'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that this piece of metal traveled 350 million miles through space and then landed on Mars.
- 10098 14y agoMe too. I mean, look at this. The place looks like a desert on Earth, and yet its millions of miles away in space, on another planet. There's a certain feeling I experience when I look at those photos, like there is a vast, cold void inside of my chest. I felt something similar when I touched a meteorite for the first time. That rock came here from god knows where, probably it was floating around in space for many many years, and now here I am holding it.
- kibwen 14y agoThat rock came here from god knows where, probably it was floating around in space for many many years Don't sell yourself short, you yourself were floating around in space for about ten billion years. Or at least, your constituent atoms were. :) "We, who embody the local eyes and ears and thoughts & feelings of the cosmos, we’ve begun - at last - to wonder about our origins. Star stuff, contemplating the stars, organized collections of ten billion, billion, billion atoms, contemplating the evolution of matter, tracing that long path by which it arrived at consciousness here on the planet Earth and perhaps - throughout the cosmos." ~ Carl Sagan
- raldi 14y agoDon't forget the part where it rode on top of a giant rocket to escape a unfathomably deep gravity well.
- delinka 14y agoAnd was eased to a landing by a rocket-powered sky crane. Yeah, it's cool that it rode a rocket, but man has been doing that for some time. But sky cranes? Completely automated? And no crashing?!? Holy crap...
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- jorgem 14y agoI am surprised by how many good sized pebbles are on the top surfaces of curiosity. I guess I expect dust, but those are pretty big. Kicked up during the landing?
- Cogito 14y agoI had assumed that they were blown there by the wind. I'm sure it's just as likely they settled after being kicked up during the landing. [EDIT] From the nasa website [1]: Today's Sol 3 morning and afternoon passes by NASA's Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft provided a plethora of new data, including more high-resolution black-and-white 360-degree and deck panorama images from her Navigation Camera, or Navcam, which revealed some small pebbles deposited on the deck during landing, which should pose no problems for mission operations. Curiosity also returned 130 low-resolution thumbnail images from the color Mast Camera, or Mastcam, providing scientists and engineers with their first color panorama glimpse of Gale Crater. [1] http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=1301 http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAct...
- vlad 14y agoA quick take on the project. Software Architect: "Hello sir! As you know, it has taken millions to billions of dollars and years of time to develop your project. We are ready to launch! As you know, it will take a year to actually deploy it in production, during which point a bug or misconfiguration of the software during the transfer, installation, or activation stages would cause it to fail. If a failure happens, we will need millions of dollars and lots of time to rebuild the project, as well as to figure out what went wrong and to try again. However, if we do succeed in installing the project as we hope, we expect will be able to run for ten years without updates. If you do need an update or if an error is encountered or the hardware deteriorates (such as because of a memory error, hard-drive crash, etc.), then parts of the application never work again. Also, as a reminder, the user will have to wait many hours after submitting input before receiving acknowledgement from the system, and many days to receive even partial results." Customer: "Thank you for your report. It sounds great. I have one suggestion. Lets make sure that when ask the system for an image, we use the .BMP format to increase the file size. This way, we can please the media with numbers about how much raw data we have obtained." Software Architect: "This will take additional time and millions of dollars and not be much of a benefit." Customer: "Ok, fine let's skip that."
- raldi 14y agoIs that BMP thing based on something that actually happened?
- vlad 14y agohttp://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4368013 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4368013
- Sharlin 14y agoWhat's the relevance of this? Since they're bandwith limited, using a more inefficient compression scheme wouldn't gain them any extra transmitted bytes, only less actual data.
- vlad 14y ago
- danielwozniak 14y agoFull screen is tight. After a few minutes of looking around at the landscape, I find my self more interested in cool 360 view of curiosity not from.
- 10098 14y agoWhy is it all black-and-white? Is it because color cameras are too heavy/expensive to take or because color photography is for some reason impossible under those conditions?
- m_for_monkey 14y agoHere is a color photo: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA16032.jpg http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA16032.jpg
- miahi 14y agoAll camera sensors are actually black and white. To obtain color information, the sensors have a color filter. This filter is optional/interchangeable in this camera. To obtain a color photo, you take three shots with three different filters (R,G,B). This way you can also get UV, IR pictures - and more.
- wlievens 14y agoTo clarify that a bit more: consumer camera's use a Bayer filter, which is an alternating R/G/G/B filter over your pixel array. So, with a consumer camera you take just one picture, and then software assembles that into a color picture. For space missions you would definitely prefer a camera with interchangeable filters, because then you can also have filters for other spectrum ranges.
- danielweber 14y agoMost (all?) of the pictures so far are from the hazard-cameras, which are used by Curiosity to make sure it doesn't fall off a cliff. (Or, less dramatically, to make sure it doesn't get stuck in some gravel.) The fact that the images are beautiful to us is just gravy.
- antimatter 14y agoAnyone know what the circular symbols (similar to the BMW logo) all over the rover mean?
- spacemouse 14y agoThe Cosmos magazines Mars issue on the iPad has a Mars panorama which utilizes gyroscope. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy3r8k8hX-8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy3r8k8hX-8 Sadly its not the panorama Curiosity took but the one from the previous Mars rover. Sill its pretty awesome.
- brg1007 14y agoCan someone explain what represents the marking on Curiosity next to NASA logo (middle part, white circle). It is present all over the robot.
- viesturs 14y agoI think it indicates moving parts.
- telepoiss 14y agoAlso I think choice of the low-res camera is related to it being better shielded against the space radiation http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135044871000380X http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1350448710... Its still somehow unbelievable that I'm actually seeing photos from another planet almost realtime.
- yason 14y agoThere it is then, going around and taking pictures. A bit lonely out there though, I must say. Space programs are always, by nature, unbelievable stunts. There are so many things that can go wrong and then they don't, and you end up landing a tonne of sensitive equipment safely on another planet and there it is then, sending vacation pictures to Earth. If they can do that, what could we do or what could I do that I don't?
- pradeep89 14y agoamazing...
- codehotter 14y agoHere are some more pictures (including color) http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/targetFamily/Mars http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/targetFamily/Mars I wonder what the sky of mars looks like. Can we see earth?
- wlievens 14y ago> Can we see earth? At night, as a pretty bright star, I'd guess. That would be an awesome picture, especially if they expose it long enough.
- danielweber 14y agoI found this http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/05/22/ http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/05/22/ IIRC, Malin is the guy in charge of the cameras on this mission, too, so that's pretty much from the biggest expert on this topic. EDIT Make sure you click on the full image -- that is amazingly beautiful!
- adrianwaj 14y agoDescent of the Phoenix http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080530.html http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080530.html Curiosity Drops In http://www.uahirise.org/images/2012/details/cut/ESP_028256_9022-1.jpg http://www.uahirise.org/images/2012/details/cut/ESP_028256_9... from: http://www.uahirise.org/releases/msl-descent.php http://www.uahirise.org/releases/msl-descent.php A Wheel on Mars http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120807.html http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120807.html landing site: http://www.uahirise.org/images/2012/details/cut/landing_site_annotated.jpg http://www.uahirise.org/images/2012/details/cut/landing_site... Curiosity Before Mars: Seven Minutes of Terror (video 5:08) http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120731.html http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120731.html
- davedda 14y agoAny thoughts on why the top area has been blacked out from view? Protecting devices? limitations of the equipment?
- jmagar 14y agoI suspect they haven't taken those photos yet.
- joshlegs 14y agoWhy is it all just barren desert? :D Too bad it's not enough for a complete 360 panoramic :(