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NASA
NASA's Curiosity rover has seven cameras mounted on its mast, including the two-camera, full-color Mastcam system; the four-camera, black-and-white Navcam system; and ChemCam, which monitors the effects of the rover's laser blasts. The Mars Hand Lens Imager is one of the instruments on the rover's robotic arm, the Mars Descent Imager is mounted on the robot's belly, and the eight-camera Hazcam system rounds out Curiosity's array of 17 cameras.
The 17 cameras on NASA's Curiosity rover are capable of sending back unprecedented, jaw-dropping, full-color views of Mars — but don't expect to be wowed by the first images. In fact, they just might be literally the size of postage stamps, in black and white.
Millions of people will be watching NASA's coverage of Curiosity's landing at 10:31 p.m. PT Sunday (1:31 a.m. ET Monday), on displays ranging from palm-sized smartphone screens to the giant screen in New York's Times Square. If the landing is successful, the first thing we'll see is bunches of grown men and women acting like giddy teenagers, pointing at blips on their computer monitors. What we definitely won't see are the 2-megapixel, color images that Curiosity's best cameras are capable of capturing.
Instead, we might see 64-by-64-pixel, black-and-white thumbnails from the rover's hazard avoidance cameras, or Hazcams. If NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter has time to relay more data from Curiosity, they might be 256 pixels square. Or there might be no pictures at all, just because Odyssey wasn't able to acquire enough of a signal fast enough.
In that case, we'll have to wait for Odyssey's second orbital pass, at around 12:45 a.m. PT Sunday (3:45 a.m. ET Monday). The fisheye-view Hazcam images sent during that opportunity could be 512 pixels square or maybe even 1,024 pixels square.
Why we'll have to wait
There's a simple reason why we won't be seeing the big, beautiful pictures from the cameras built into Curiosity's mast: That mast, which rises 6.5 feet (2 meters) above the Martian surface when fully extended, won't be deployed until later in the week. First, the rover's eight Hazcams (four looking forward, four looking backward) will have to do a quick check of the surroundings.
A couple of gems could become available later Monday. For instance, there might be a picture from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, showing Curiosity and the rest of the $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory payload descending through the Red Planet's atmosphere. MRO was able to snap a picture of the Phoenix Mars Lander's descent in 2008, and if the orbiter captures a similar view this time around, that could be released around 9 a.m. PT (noon ET) Monday.
The first thumbnails from Curiosity's Mars Descent Imager could be released around 4 p.m. PT (7 p.m. ET) Monday. That camera, also known as MARDI, should have recorded a sequence of color frames looking down from the rover during its descent, and once they're all relayed back to Earth and put together, they'll make for a great movie.
By Wednesday, the rover could be sticking out its robotic arm to let the Mars Hand Lens Imager, or MAHLI, take a full-color picture of the ground surrounding Curiosity. The mast should be raised around this time as well. First, the navigation camera system, or Navcam, is due to send back some nice, quick black-and-white views. By Thursday, the full-color Mastcam system is expected to be sending back wide-angle and fixed-zoom images.
Star of the show
Mastcam promises to be the star of the show once the mission hits full stride: The system's right-eye camera has a telephoto lens, capable of reading the "ONE CENT" lettering on a penny on the ground beside the rover, or distinguishing between a basketball and a football at a distance of seven football fields (roughly 700 yards or meters). It's called "Mastcam 100" because of the camera lens' 100mm focal length.
The left-eye camera (Mastcam 34) has a wide-angle, 34mm lens that captures a scene three times wider. It can snap 15 images in about 25 minutes to create a full-color, 360-degree panorama. Both cameras can record high-definition video at 5 frames per second, and the pictures can be combined for 3-D views.
Damian Dovarganes / AP
The seven cameras on Curiosity's mast include ChemCam, visible as a large lens at top right; the wide-angle and telephoto Mastcam cameras, visible as two rectangular eyes below ChemCam; and the four-camera Navcam system, visible as smaller round lenses to the left and right of the Mastcam pair.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS
These pictures show what the wide-angle and telephoto cameras of the Mastcam system could see at a distance of 10 meters (33 feet). The top image (Mastcam 34 equivalent) covers an area about 14 feet (4.3 meters) across and has a resolution of one-third of an inch (0.84 centimeter). The bottom image (Mastcam 100 equivalent) covers an area 61 inches (1.55 meters) across and has a resolution of one-eleventh of an inch (less than a quarter of a centimeter).
The panoramic cameras on NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers had to take multiple images using different filters to create color pictures, but the imaging chip used in each of Curiosity's Mastcam cameras is built to produce full-color views with one snap. "It's identical to what most consumer cameras have," said Justin Maki of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who's a co-investigator on the Mastcam team and the lead engineer for the Hazcam and Navcam systems.
The Navcam system has four cameras, which are set up to produce left-eye and right-eye views in black and white. (Each "eye" is doubled up for redundancy's sake.) The Curiosity team will rely on the Navcam views to plot the rover's course during the two-year mission. It takes just 10 minutes for Navcam to produce a 360-degree panorama.
"Rover missions are highly dependent on the images," Maki explained. "The entire mission is occurring within the images we receive. ... When we land, we actually start with that first panorama. We bootstrap ourselves starting with that first images, and then we drive into those images and do it again."
Rover can take self-portraits
The MAHLI ("Molly") camera serves as the equivalent of the hand lens typically used by geologists to take a close look at rocks. It's similar to but more capable than the Microscopic Imager used on Spirit and Opportunity. At closest range (about 0.8 inch, or 21 millimeters), MAHLI can achieve a resolution of 14 microns (less than a thousandth of an inch). Its images will be in full color, which is a step above the Microscopic Imager's black-and-white views. MAHLI can use LED lighting to illuminate its target. And it can be focused at different ranges to produce microscopic detail in depth.
Because MAHLI is mounted on Curiosity's robotic arm, which can be extended to a distance of 6.2 feet (1.9 meters) from the front of the rover's body, that camera can be raised to see over an obstacle that blocks Mastcam's view. It can also be turned around to take a nifty self-portrait of the rover.
The black-and-white ChemCam camera, situated at the top of Curiosity's mast, can be used to study soil and rocks from a distance, but it also serves a specialized purpose: to observe the sparks given off by the rover's rock-zapping laser. The light from those zaps will also be analyzed by three spectrometers inside the rover to determine a rock's chemical composition.
Curiosity may be more loaded up with imaging technology than the geekiest camera-toting tourist, but it's good to keep a sense of perspective here. This mission is not just about the technology. The point is get the best view available of terrain that rises more than 3 miles (5 kilometers) above the floor of Gale Crater, potentially recording billions of years of geological change. That's something that will make Curiosity's vistas unlike any seen before.
"The biggest difference is that we're landing next to a mountain, so the images are going to be spectacular even if they're in black and white," Maki told me. "The most exciting thing is where we're going."
More about Mars:
- Curiosity aims to unlock Martian mysteries
- Mars team takes '7 Minutes of Terror' in stride
- 'Star Trek' icons marvel over Mars
- Is there a virtual Mars in our future?
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
Leave a Comment:
Really cool science. Curiosity is worth more than $2.6 billion earthling monetary system. A group of human can do amazing things. Keep it up guys, Earth North Pole ice is melting at increasingly faster rate.
Imagine what we could do if the military had NASA's budget and NASA and the scientific community had the military budget over the past 30 years instead of fighting insane and pointless wars.
My thoughts exactly. Every time someone rolls their eyes at Curiosity's $2.5B price tag, I just remind them of the ludicrous $50B war-time delta's to keep Earths deserts lined with lead.
We spent $3T(and counting) on the wars...for what !?
$3T is 1200 Curiosity's. Think about that for awhile. Just think about it next time our moronic leaders start rattling their sabers.
I would rather spend money on space than support some of the countries we do around this world.
OH AND BY THE WAY i would rather have given 50 billion to NASA than the banks and the CEO'S from the bailout.
Yeah...lets start building the enterprise. We are going to need large ships in the future to accomodate large crews. We can't keep sending handfuls of people. If you want to develop a space faring culture, we will need large craft with ion propulsion and someday even matter/anti-matter driven craft that can reach 1/10 the speed of light. ...30,000 kms/sec. (19,000 mps).
The little green men are gonna rover-jack this thing, mark my words
Weeeellll, I'm guessing they will be little red men on Mars, but what do I know? Rover-jacking? It's a possibility but it's more likely going to be the Chinese who will try to rover-jack Curiosity.
Actual, true color pictures of Mars will be very interesting and I'm anxious to see them, but what I'm most excited about is the possibility that Curiosity could answer the questions regarding past or current life on Mars and the availability of water.
This could be a life-changing mission for many people on Earth. I'm hoping for the best.
"May you live in interesting times."
Ancient Chinese Curse.
The first night, this thing is gonna be cinder-blocked!
Hey Skip Nickolson, Oklahoma City,
Quote, "...Actual, true color pictures of Mars will be very interesting and I'm anxious to see them...". Anxious, what are you afraid of, why are are you nervousness or agitated? My bet is you intended to use "eager".
Bubba, "anxious - eagerly desirous" My bet is that he intended to use "anxious." Please confine your comments to the article. Most people who try to prove how smart they are instead, accomplish the opposite.
I sure hope the locals don't get too p.o.'d with the car alarm going off in the middle of the night!
These are exciting times.
P.S. UFO's are real.
How do i know?
It really does no good to try and explain. But it's true.
hmmmm....if you had actual proof of other life existing in the universe, it might 'do a little good' to try and explain! haha
What an amazing experience. I hope the landing goes well so that we can get on with the science! All money spent in exploration is money well spent, even if things don't go as planned. It was through learning from our past mistakes that we have been able to achieve things such as this. Now we need a manned space flight...colonization of other planets, moons, and asteroids....it will all come. I just hope it happens within my lifetime.
A truer statement has not been made. We need to start harvesting and mining materials to build spaceships OFF the earth. This will make it easier to launch and simpler to obtain exotic fuels for the
nex-gen rockets for deep-space exploration.
IN MY LIFETIME. OOOHHH yeah!
BUT most likely not in our lifetimes. It will be AT-LEAST another 40-50 years before we start meaningful mining and building of spaceships
I agree! I would love to see humankind move into space, but in the event that I don't last that long, I'm going to work hard to teach my daughters science, math and other skills that might take them closer than I will get! Investing in education and exploration is the future of the human race.
The beginnings will probably start in our lifetime. But, full colonization will probably take over a century. If I recall, estimates for terraforming would be over 200 years.
O'Neill cylinders.
I really believe future colonies will be in them. Imagine miles long cylinders with there own colonies in orbit. They will have artifical gravity, their own farms, even streams and parks. Some could have their own industries to work material mined from asteroids.
Look 'em up.
*their...not "there" duhhh
"We might see 64-by-64-pixel, black-and-white thumbnails from the rover's hazard avoidance cameras..."
Apparently the rover's hazard avoidance cameras are powered by the new Blackberry 7!
Or a Commodore 64..
Crossing my fingers and toes that all goes well. Too bad the global economy is in the shape it's in. Puts even more pressure on those connected with this mission to succeed since there may not be another comparable opportunity for a while. I hope I live long enough to see additional missions to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn!
"It can also be turned around to take a nifty self-portrait of the rover."
That should be pretty cool as long as the rover is incapable of doing that stupid "duck face".
i cant wait to get my hands on self portraits from Curiosity. photoshopping hello kitty into the images is going to be priceless..
This is really an exciting mission. I hope that all goes well during the landing. I was fortunate to be just the right age during the Apollo missions. It was a great time for space flight.
I will be very impressed if the rover is actually able to land right next to that penny! :)
The penny is mounted to the robotic arm on the rover. It will be used to calibrate the cameras.
Good article; I found the review of the cameras and examples to be well done. Looking forward to more details as the mission unfolds. Crossing my fingers for a successful landing.
Excitement is building!!! This mission will be fantastic!
I hope they find evidence of microbial life on Mars just to piss off all the religious freaks on this planet.
I do too, but no question they will just claim god put those microbes there to "test their faith."
Pat
Why will this make the religious people mad?
Its not to often that I look foward to the end of my weekend! Best of luck on the landing Curiosity! I cant wait to read about your findings!
Win, lose, or draw, this is an amazing feat of engineering! Best of luck to the scientists and engineers at NASA for a successful landing!
As Jimmy plays his guitar, the rover sings "I'm landing next to a mountain......chop it down with the edge of my robotic hand." Roll on voodoo child, roll in peace.
I would happily pay MORE taxes to support NASA and programs such as this.
But not to police the world and enrich the military industrial complex with no-bid contracts to 'rebuild' 'liberated' countries.
And not to bail out banks and Wall Street.
And not to subsidize tax cuts for the wealthy 'job creators'.
Speaking of, why don't some of these anointed philanthropist job creators privately donate to fund NASA and future programs?
A few billion is peanuts compared to the TRILLIONS they are hiding off shore to avoid taxes.
Oh, wait, silly me. Endgame wealthy.
dont expect to see much, NASA (Never A Straight Answer) is sure to plop it down in the middle of the most barren, desolate and unremarkable territory they can find. then do a few tests and fail to come up with any serious answers except to a few inane pointless questions they themselves ask.
so sorry NASA, out of money, out of favor and too pedantic to actually do any interesting looking. no doubt its mostly because your full of 2nd and 3rd stringers just desperate to hold onto a paying job. its fine as long as you dont stir the pot youll all be fine. which actually is more the pity because mars really is the only place we can go in the solar system and possibly survive on the surface
you're one of those 'clinically never impressed' people aren't you... build your own rover and land it on ur-anus...
pull your head out of uranus first
Maybe we really should 'build our own rover'. Open-Source style. Sure, I love NASA and you Americans are right to be proud - but man its felt like one slow haul since Armstrong's heyday.
Of course NASA's out of money. They've had their budget cut every year since 1969. Half of the missions NASA's worked on have been scrapped, even during good economic times, because we supposedly had better things to spend NASA's small budget on. (And now the same people who screamed about what a waste of money NASA is are saying Obama has "outsourced" the space program. Incredible...) People like you, who apparently don't understand science and think a trip to Mars is for scenic postcard shots, make ignorant statements like "NASA (Never A Straight Answer) is sure to plop it down in the middle of the most barren, desolate and unremarkable territory they can find. then do a few tests and fail to come up with any serious answers except to a few inane pointless questions they themselves ask."
You mean Spirit's and Opportunity's pictures were "unremarkable"? You evidently didn't see the pictures. The Phoenix mission didn't come up with "serious answers"? Do just a little reading about these missions,dude. These missions are about science, not photo-ops. Educate yourself instead of making asinine statements.
I am staying pretty optimistic about this mission. In fact, I'm pretty excited about it. I support any effort by NASA to directly reach out to and study distant, extraterrestrial bodies. I hope Curiosity lands successfully and NASA keeps receiving support. The human effort to reach out beyond our planet needs to be pursued as much as possible.
It's not the endgame, but did I read correctly? A TWO megapixel camera? Seriously? That resolution is like my phone camera from 5 years ago!
If you knew anything about cameras you wouldn't make such a uninformed comment. The only thing you gain with more megapixels is the ability to make larger prints without the pixels showing. A two megapixel camera can make perfect 3"x4" prints in high resolution. You can zoom in with the 100mm lens to see further, then take a two megapixel picture of that image. It is still a high resolution image You just see a smaller area with each image. That's why superior optics allows you to take very clear images without using a higher megapixel camera. If you try to zoom in on the image you've taken, you will will start to see individual pixels. All a higher megapixel camera allows you to do is to make larger image size prints like 8x10 or 11x14. It is just marketing that gets people to buy high megapixel cameras. An eight megapixel picture at 3x4 looks no different then a two megapixel picture.
Today the researchers noted that the cameras are pretty analogous to what we have on mobile phones or point-and-shoot cameras, so that part of the technology is not super gee-whiz. I suppose the most jaw-dropping part of all this is that they'll be showing MARS!!! ... and every picture will be in color.
I do not agree with the landing scheme for this very expensive mobile laboratory (rover) Curiosity. The tethers will require to be in full tension to avoid any rotation modes of oscillations just before touchdown. The tethers can also get tangled when they are released, when the rover separates from the crane housing, will they all release at the same time and orientation?
I understand they require a pin point landing for best chance of landing in the crater and at the base of this specific mountain but there are other ways to soft land with precision. The Martin atmosphere is dense enough to glide down with enough control from orbit and/or ground telemetry.
I give this more than 50% chance of crash landing. For $2.5 billion we should have designed a better survivable landing scheme.
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I don't care how sophisticated the force transducers are, attaching the tethers to the crane. Once released the rover will rotate down, like a ball falling in a conical surface. If the rotations are not nulled out by the time it touches down it will touch on an edge and start tumbling.
This scenario may even screw up the control of the hovering crane and the whole system could come crashing down. Very messy landing, scheme indeed, too many degrees of freedom, too many components in the loop. In my long career with servo systems the more components your have in the loop the longer the time constant and so the steady state error when it touches will be an unknown.
I wish and hope it does land safely because this is the most sophisticated mobile laboratory yet and it is a good site. The mountain is high enough with gentle slopes so we can gather tons of data on the history of the planet. So good luck.
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http://www.planetaryprobe.eu/IPPW7/proceedings/IPPW7%20Proceedings/Presentations/Session5/pr478.pdf
Sorry I can't see equal tension in all the tethers during the 20 sec from separation to the snatch event.
Also, only one snatch event of 2 sec duration, really? A slight gust of side wind will challenge this event, surely. Allowing for 2 or even 3 snatches would have been more prudent, but I am guessing the fuel expenditure did not allow it? Also allowing a single 2 sec transient for a 12 sec event?
Another observation, if the attachment point on the rover are representative as shown in the power point the horizontal force components in the transducers are order of magnitudes smaller that the vertical. i hope you are using to scales or error terms since the time constants will be different.
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Potential safer landing scheme: Instead of lower the fully deployed rover, lower by the similar skycrane and tether method but packaged in an airbag (deflated and folded during transit) / shock absorbing / pedal actuation system. The airbags could have been pressurize during the tether deployment reaching full pressure before the snatch event. At an "acceptable" altitude disengage the tethers from either the airbags and/or the skycrane (preferably at the airbags to remove the tethers from the landing site) and drop the fully pressurized airbags. The rest of the landing would be similar to the previous two successful missions.
Advantage would be a great reduction in Criticality 1 components. Also, if feasible w.r.t. fuel/mass/volume the airbag system could be a double layered with the inner layer fully pressurize either in orbit or during the parachute decent to withstand worst case landing shock in case the outer layer fails. The double layered airbags could be design for the outer to take the initial large displacements and the inner layer to withstand worst case landing shocks of the rover critical components.
Good luck.
Ad'M
you really know how to suck the oxygen out of a room... don't you have a positive bone in your body ?
these guys spent 5 years researching all this and you come along and in 5 minutes find fault with everything they did, what a bummer!!!
i would like to donate my nervous system to NASA so in the event that i die suddenly they can put my brain into the next rover. i'll discover the sh*t outta Mars i promise!
if there's anyway for my rover to fly... that'd be great....
My prediction? The rover hits mars at several thousand miles per hour.
"The most exciting thing is where we're going." In more ways than one. Hope all goes well!
PT Barnum would have pissed his britches...
If the rover lands, we have years on new Martian terrain
If the rover crashes, we have years of hammering NASA
Either way, Mr Science Obama gets the spotlight...
If it lands, then we get new and important information! If it crashes, we have learned how not to do it, and proceed smarter than we were before. I'm not sure how calling President Obama "Mr. Science" is a bad thing? Unless you are one of those people who don't like science, or technology, or progress? In that case, please put your computer away, grab a beer and walk to the nearest fishing hole, and stop worrying about crazy stuff like "outer space."
FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION...With all due respect, I believe this to be Mars exporations' finest hour !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjiGH9QNiU0
As wonderful as the Mars vista will be, I would really like to see the Martian night sky with Earth and Venus setting in the West.
Go NASA go!