Posted on 01/14/2004 1:25:54 AM PST by Swordmaker
If you’re marveling over the incredibly detailed pictures of Mars sent back to Earth by Spirit, the Mars Exploration Rover, prepare to be blown away by what you can do with these images right on your own Mac.
All you need is Maestro, a scientific visualization tool created by the scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to work with the rovers Spirit and Opportunity. During the 2004 Mars Exploration Rover Mission, you can download a free copy of Maestro for Mac OS X from NASA JPL that allows you to see Mars in ways you’ve never imagined. “It’s actually the same software that the scientists use to view downlink data and to plan Rover activities from day to day,” says Gene Chalfant, technical staff member at NASA JPL.
For at least 12 weeks starting in early January, JPL will provide fresh sets of image data once per week that you can download and view using Maestro as your window into a new world. It’s an unprecedented way to track and watch as scientists attempt to unearth (or should that be “unmars”?) some of the planet’s hidden secrets. “It’s kind of a sandbox for people to play in,” Chalfant says. “The visualization builds a 3-D model you can spin around and look at.”
It’s mind-boggling, really. For the first time, just about anyone in the world with a late-model computer can manipulate scientific data from another planet soon after its arrival on Earth. And it’s the first time this kind of information has ever been made available to such a wide range of enthusiasts outside of NASA — from educators, to fellow scientists, to the average armchair astronaut sitting at home.
Water, Water, Anywhere?
The notion that life may exist on Mars has intrigued mankind for centuries. But in this mission, scientists hope to find something more rudimentary: evidence that water once flowed on the Martian surface. If water was once on Mars, then life — in even its simplest forms — may have existed there too, scientists believe. JPL is using the Rovers to analyze the planet’s geology in areas that show particular promise, hoping to ferret out any clues in its rocks and soil using sophisticated imaging technology.
The Rover Spirit is now roaming around inside Gusev Crater, which Mars scientists are analyzing to see if it was once a lake. And the Rover Opportunity is scheduled to roll around the Meridiani Planum, a region with exposed mineral deposits that typically form under watery conditions. Scientists targeted these areas for closer study after analyzing data sent to Earth from the Mars Odyssey spacecraft, which still orbits the Red Planet today.
Rovers Fetch Images
To capture image data, each golf-cart sized Rover uses several pairs of cameras mounted atop its mast, which stands about five to six feet off the ground. One pair comprises the navigational camera, called a Navcam, and another pair makes up the panoramic camera, called the Pancam. Each camera is configured as a pair so it can capture 3-D stereo images.
The Navcam takes wide-angle black and white pictures all around the Rover so that scientists can decide where to send the vehicle next. The Pancam is a high-resolution color camera used for scientific analysis of surface features. A third imaging device mounted on the mast, the Mini-TES, or Thermal Emission Spectrometer, reads the infrared radiation of geological features, such as rocks, to determine what they’re made of.
Acting as remote-controlled geologists, each Rover can extend a robotic arm to grind the surfaces of rocks using special abrasion tools, capturing images of the resulting rock fragments using its cameras. One kind of camera mounted on the arm, a Microscopic Imager, shoots extreme close-ups of rocks and soil. Images from two spectrometers on the Rover arm, an Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer and a Mossbauer Spectrometer, let scientists analyze mineral composition in greater detail.?
Conducting Research with Maestro
If you’re ready to get started and have checked the requirements for using Maestro on your Mac, you can download the application and begin your exploration of Mars. For a proper orientation, launch Maestro and select “Go to the ISIL test facility” to take a tour accompanied by, appropriately enough, a user-friendly guide named “Conductor.” The tour also includes tutorials on many of the things you can do with the data sets you’ll fetch from the Maestro website in the weeks to come, including how to work with pictures and 3-D views, and how to create your own virtual Rover activities.
Once you’re comfortable with the basics of Maestro, you can start downloading data sets and moving around Mars. Conductor returns to walk you through each set, explaining what you’re looking at and pointing out the highlights. With each data set, you get several folders of images to investigate on your own, easily accessible from the Database window at the left of the application screen. Maestro’s tools let you navigate a virtual Rover to targets and features that interest you. Using your mouse, you can spin the panoramic images to see the surface of Mars from overhead or in landscape views as if you were standing near the Rover itself.
Who would have thought that anyone could tool around Mars from the comfort of home? Maybe it’s time to put Holst’s “The Planets, Op. 32” on iTunes, and give Maestro a spin.
See in 3-D, Free. Some of the pictures from the Mars Exploration Rover
are stereo images meant to be viewed in 3-D. To see
them, you’ll need a pair of Anaglyph 3-D glasses — the same
kind used to view vintage 3-D science fiction films.
Versions of MAESTRO are available for Macintosh OSX, Windows XP, 2000, ME 98, Sun Solaris-SPARC, Linux -x86.
3D viewer glasses (red/blue) are available free from Rainbow Symphony for a Self Addressed Stamped Envelope.
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