Footage of Curiosity’s Descent onto Mars Interpolated to 25 Frames per Second

PETAPIXEL ^ | August 27, 2012 | Michael Zhang

[SWAMPSNIPER]

NASA’s Curiosity Rover snapped photographs at 5 frames per second as it descended onto the face of Mars a few weeks ago. The footage that results when the images are combined into a 15 frame per second HD video is pretty amazing, but apparently not amazing enough for a YouTube user named hahahaspam. He spent four straight days taking the 5 fps footage and interpolating it to 25 frames per second. This means that instead of a video showing the choppy landing at 3 times the actual speed, his video shows the landing smoothly and in real time!

[SWAMPSNIPER]

pinglist

[UCANSEE2]

I’ll be jumping back to read and watch at the source article, but I wanted to THANK YOU first, for providing a thread on something other than political conventions.

[Darksheare]

An Undead Thread Tech&Science ping to something neat.

[Ronald_Magnus]

VERY cool. Thanks.

[SWAMPSNIPER]

Hey, I do it all the time!

[PogySailor]

bttt

[nicmarlo]

that’s cool. thanks for the ping, darks!

[Paradox]

Utterly AMAZING that anyone with the knowledge and time, can sit down on their home computer and do this. SMH...

[Darksheare]

Welcome!

NNB and I have a couple story bits that take place one Mars.
Neat to see how a descent looks “from the perspective of teh descendee.”

[Chode]

thx... very cool

[nicmarlo]

Yeah, that was cool to watch. :)

[berdie]

Very cool!

Thanks for the ping.

[Alas Babylon!]

Yes you do and BTW, THANKS!

[Jet Jaguar]

Thanks for the ping!

[GVnana]

I went to the original image sequence and started oding manual motion tracking, watching a crater here or there. I made sure I always had at least two data points at any given time so that I could reposition and rotate for fluid motion.
Then I copied that motion tracking data to some null objects, and told after effects to interpolate the data in between using bezier curves.

Oh, I hate people like that.

[philman_36]

Direct link to video...@Complete MSL Curiosity Descent Interpolated HD

[dr_lew]

Oh, I hate people like that.

I know what you mean, although I did use a Bezier curve to draw Bubba's winning shot at the 10th at Augusta onto a Google Earth screenshot, so you know, really I'm right there.

[castlebrew]

Marvelous!!!!

[NCC-1701]

What’s neat is that you can track the heat shield almost until it hits the surface. You can track it until :46 into the film. The Curiosity jerks around and yaws right and you lose sight of it. Still, that was great work for four days of effort. The next lander should carry a video camera that records the landing in real time for later uplinking to Earth. Better yet, carry two cameras so there would be two angles of the landing. Might be a nice engineering tool to boot.

[JAKraig]

Now, this is what you see when you look up “cool” in the dictionary.

Thanks

[Flotsam_Jetsome]

Absolutely the coolest thing I’ve seen all day. Domo!

[philman_36]

To be honest, I'm not really that interested in it all. I just provided a direct link.
If they find something of interest...well that depends on what they find.
Rocks? Seen 'em. Got 'em here on Earth.
Dirt? Seen it. Got it here on Earth.
Water or ice...hey...now you've got my interest.

Little green men? Okay, okay...I know when I've gone too far.

[dr_lew]

I had been trying to follow the original thumbnail video down to the landing site, but found it impossible. With the hi-res version I could do it, and of course it is that much easier with this "massaged" version. Below is a frame of the video marked with the landing site and an excerpt of a HiRise image display at about the same scale, also marked. This image is oriented north-south. You can see the ridge line on the left of this image in earlier frames of the video, and from there you can track the landing site back to the beginning.

One comment: It looks like the entire landing site was scoured by the rockets, since numerous rocks seem to be uncovered. I guess the four scour marks are much deeper.

[dr_lew]

Water or ice...hey...now you've got my interest.

There is a lot of water ice on Mars, comprising large geological features near the poles.

[philman_36]

There is a lot of water ice on Mars, comprising large geological features near the poles.
Really?! On the surface? I've kept up to some degree.

Found it! Ice on Mars

May 28, 2002: Using instruments on NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft, surprised scientists have found enormous quantities of buried treasure lying just under the surface of Mars -- enough water ice to fill Lake Michigan twice over. And that may be only the tip of the iceberg.

Meteorite Impacts Expose Ice on Mars
September 24, 2009: Meteorites recently striking Mars have exposed deposits of frozen water not far below the Martian surface.

If there are "large geological features" on the surface then that's news to me.
Got link? I'm interested now.

[dr_lew]

Cf. the Wikipedia articles Planum Australe and Planum Boreum. I've always thought the Mars guys are "water happy", so maybe this is all CO2, but I think I should defer to them on this matter.

You know though, when they dug that little trench and found "ice", I didn't believe that. Seemed like "dry ice" to me. I even sent in a skeptical remark, and amazingly I got a reply ... blah blah blah, but a reply.

[philman_36]

I’ll just continue watching “from afar”, if you will, as I have been. If anything “exciting” gets found I’ll hear about it one way or another.

[dr_lew]

May the bluebird of happiness fly up your nose.

[jmcenanly]

At about 1:17 you can see the transition between the parachute and the skycrane as the view abruptly stops swinging, looking for all the worlds like an Apollo landing.

[afraidfortherepublic]

Yeah, but where’s the flag? (Just kidding.) Thanks for posting.

[stephenjohnbanker]

Thanks, Darks.

[philman_36]

@http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILAqjcP6uRI

[Tijeras_Slim]

Wow! Thanks!

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Darksheare. An ‘extra, extra’ ping to APoD members.

[brivette]

it’s folks like you that make this site a great place...

[Darksheare]

Very welcome.

[steelyourfaith]

Thanx for the ping SunkenCiv!

That was awesome !!!

[SunkenCiv]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/968494/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1448047/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1756678/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2154383/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2154383/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2506127/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2726270/posts

and from some know-all:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1088571/posts?page=46#46
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1057694/posts?page=68#68

My very first FR post:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1051021/posts?page=8#8

[brytlea]

Very cool. Wish I’d seen John Carter there!

[TEXOKIE]

I can ALWAYS count on you for an interesting thread! thanks so much!
texokie