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New Mars Probe Sends Back View From Orbit
AP on Yahoo ^ | 3/24/06 | John Antczak - ap

Posted on 03/24/2006 7:33:01 PM PST by NormsRevenge

LOS ANGELES - A high-resolution camera aboard NASA's latest spacecraft to reach Mars sent back its first view of the Red Planet from orbit, the space agency said Friday.

The crisp test image from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was taken late Thursday at an altitude of 1,547 miles and shows a 30.9-mile-by-11.7-mile area of the planet's mid-latitude southern highlands. The mosaic of 10 side-by-side exposures shows a cratered surface with ravine- or canyon-like channels on both sides.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said the smallest discernible objects are about 25 feet across, but that the camera will be able to capture images of objects less than three feet across once it reaches its much lower "mapping orbit."

The quality bodes well for future pictures, said Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona, principal investigator for the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera.

"The performance of the spacecraft looks superb, there's certainly no obvious smear here," he said in a telephone interview. "They have pointed us and oriented us just right to get unsmeared images."

The spacecraft reached Mars on March 10 and went into a giant elliptical orbit. Over a period of months it will dip into the upper atmosphere in a process called aerobraking to reach altitudes between about 199 miles and 158 miles and to make its orbit more circular. The science phase of the $720 million mission should begin in November.

The first image is comparable in resolution to those from the Mars Orbiter Camera aboard the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, which has been orbiting the Red Planet since 1997, McEwen said.

The main purpose of the initial image was to calibrate the camera. Two other cameras on the orbiter, the Context Camera and the Mars Color Imager, were also tested Thursday night during a 40-minute collection of engineering data.

___

On the Net:

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter: http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/


TOPICS: Government; News/Current Events; Your Opinion/Questions
KEYWORDS: mars; mro; orbit; probe; view
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To: Central Scrutiniser
Well if Hoagland's claims were so crazy then why do we keep sending robots, and only robots back to Mars? Hmm? Mmm? HMMMM?

/humorous sarcasm, folks

21 posted on 03/24/2006 8:10:43 PM PST by manwiththehands (Islam is as Islam does. Islam is as Islam allows.)
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To: StormEye

>Somebody tell Richard Hoagland!! There must be an
alien artifact somewhere in those photos!

You mean you don't see that four-fingered alien hadprint on the last photo in post 1, about 10% down from the top, and 40% over from the left??!! You can even see the fingernails!


22 posted on 03/24/2006 8:13:08 PM PST by XEHRpa
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To: Central Scrutiniser
Actually it will resolve a little better. The NASA press release says that in the science phase it will have a resolution of 28 cm per pixel.
23 posted on 03/24/2006 8:14:35 PM PST by burzum (A single reprimand does more for a man of intelligence than a hundred lashes for a fool.--Prov 17:10)
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To: henbane

Jimi Hendrix?! Cool!


24 posted on 03/24/2006 8:14:52 PM PST by XEHRpa
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To: NormsRevenge

Hey, I see signs of electricity down there!


25 posted on 03/24/2006 8:26:38 PM PST by goodnesswins ( "the left can only take power through deception." (and it seems Hillary & Company are the masters)
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To: IronJack
The detail image in post 12 is the 30 miler as I interpret the caption.
26 posted on 03/24/2006 8:33:53 PM PST by NormsRevenge (Semper Fi ... Monthly Donor spoken Here. Go to ... https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: ElkGroveDan
"NASA has not been doing that. If you have an example please direct me to it."

False-color Martian images:

* http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/mars/images/vall_mars_image.html
* http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/mars/images/volc_lge_image.html

*above photos captioned 'false color' via this page - both "Courtesy of NASA": http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/mars/mars_il.html

Regarding vertical exaggeration:

http://human-factors.arc.nasa.gov/IHpublications/mcgreevy/VRPE/wex.VRPE.2.html

Magellan data is providing a detailed digital model of Venus for virtual exploration on Earth. Already, dramatic virtual flights of exploration over the fascinatingly varied terrains of Venus have been computed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab. It is not widely appreciated, however, that in these scenes the vertical scale is usually exaggerated by a factor of 22.5. This has serious potential to mislead the unwary, especially if the observer has not first seen the unexaggerated terrain (Brooks, F., personal communication, 1989).

This pertains to Venus, not Mars, but I feel my complaint holds. Imagine presenting ANYTHING scaled up by a factor 22.5 -- you would rightly be sued, fined, accused of fraud...

27 posted on 03/24/2006 8:59:25 PM PST by SteveMcKing
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To: SteveMcKing
Those not NASA releases. The images are courtesy of NASA, but it's not clear who colored them.

If you go to the Mars Exploration Rover pages, or the Mars Global Surveyor, or Cassini, or the archived Mars Pathfinder web sites you'll see that the photos are essentially un re-touched.

The only exception are "false color" images that are taken in different spectra for science reasons showing some shades of gray as blue and whatnot to identify certain minerals better.

The point is that NASA is not in the habit of creating false images for public consumption. In fact they go out of their way to provide more raw data than they need to in order to shut up the conspiracy kooks.

28 posted on 03/24/2006 9:10:31 PM PST by ElkGroveDan (California bashers will be called out)
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To: NormsRevenge

Are those little bumps the little green men.


29 posted on 03/24/2006 9:26:23 PM PST by Frwy
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To: ElkGroveDan
"Those not NASA releases. The images are courtesy of NASA, but it's not clear who colored them."

Here are direct-from-NASA Mars rover false-color images. NASA's website is wrought with them.

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/MPF/ops/sunset_rt_sm.gif

http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20051222a/Sol594A_P2281_L257F-A597R1_br.jpg

30 posted on 03/24/2006 9:28:44 PM PST by SteveMcKing
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Comment #31 Removed by Moderator

To: SteveMcKing

I despise people like you. You add nothing to anything.


32 posted on 03/24/2006 10:40:11 PM PST by truthpls
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To: ElkGroveDan; SteveMcKing

Actually i heard they set the colour systems on the first pictures taken from mars wrong. As a result the first (sets?) of pictures where far too red.

However Mars still is red just not like the first pictures which showed that te soil and the atmosphere where both bloodred!

Most of the rocky soil is reddish/brown, some is yellow or other color, and the sky looks normal (whitish).

You can see the differences for yourselves if you compare pics.


33 posted on 03/25/2006 2:31:44 AM PST by S0122017
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To: S0122017
Is this what you mean?

http://mars-news.de/color/blue.html


Pic. A, Viking 1, Nr. 12b069, 29. August 1976, 12.65 locale Mars time
This picture was created with color-correction derived from the filter response data.  (click on picture to view it in original size)
All Viking and Pathfinder images courtesy of JPL/NASA/Caltech.

original data without correction

34 posted on 03/25/2006 2:41:11 AM PST by monkapotamus
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To: All
I don't know what these surface features are (images from Mars Global Surveyor) but they are interesting:

http://ida.wr.usgs.gov/html/m08046/m0804688.html


35 posted on 03/25/2006 2:52:55 AM PST by monkapotamus
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To: henbane

Is that Helen Thomas' high school picture?


36 posted on 03/25/2006 2:54:52 AM PST by leprechaun9
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To: SteveMcKing
I feel my complaint holds.""

You obviously don't listen to Neal Boortz. Every time someone says "I feel" he asks, "do you feel or do you think?"

Carolyn

37 posted on 03/25/2006 3:01:15 AM PST by CDHart
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To: SteveMcKing
They are done that way INTENTIONALLY for science reasons. They are not represented by NASA as anything else.

The color images are created after they get to JPL by combining various layers taken by assorted filters. To be exact, no color pictures are taken in the conventional sense with the MER cameras. All photos from MERs are taken as black and white images to begin with.

38 posted on 03/25/2006 11:08:13 AM PST by ElkGroveDan (California bashers will be called out)
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To: NormsRevenge

Looks like a Jeep trail with a washout.


39 posted on 03/25/2006 11:14:57 AM PST by poindexter
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To: truthpls
"I despise people like you. You add nothing to anything."

By what measure do you determine contribution?

How would this relate to my point that dramatization with color effects and the manipulating of data by factors exceeding 20X is deceptive and wrong?

40 posted on 03/25/2006 12:38:50 PM PST by SteveMcKing
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