Mars 360-degree panoramic view from Curiosity
online.wsj.com
online.wsj.com
But I haven't seen an explanation why bandwidth is so low -- is it lack of spectrum? Interference issues?
Transmit power.
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.
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/communicationwithearth/...
It is Curiosity that is not in sight of the Orbiters, again because of their low orbit.
What you'd need is a whole series of them to increase coverage.
But seriously, I guess for the same reason Couriosity runs on old PowerPC processors. They are just well tested and less likely to fail. If you want a high res image, you can always take 10 images and glue them together, result is the same.
They use a black and white CMOS to accurately measure the actual light hitting the lens (which may include non visible spectrum. To get a colour image they need to use filters and take multiple photos, where as consumer cameras have a fixed grid (Bayer pattern) of one filter per each pixel. That probably won't give you such an accurate picture. Also when they're using filters they're not interested in reproducing true colour but rather highlighting a difference in materials.
The bandwidth constraints no doubt the reason they didn't change the sensor. Besides, when they combine three different images taken with filters to create one colour image it will essentially be 6MP anyway.
We send up camera's tested and hardened against temperature changes, dust, vibration, and radiation. Also cameras that require low power.
Furthermore, there is limited bandwidth. So we probably want to send back mediocre pictures most of the time and if we see something we really want in high quality we take a bunch of pictures of it and put them together.
As a final note, the quality of the sensor and lens probably matters a lot more than the number of mega pixels.
And for the record, I think it is amazing and wonderful to receive these images. I am so thankful for that. But, for a data collection instrument that cost $2.6 billion to build, I cannot conceal my very personal feeling that an opportunity was missed.
Also included in the budget is funding needed for all of the science teams to do what they do over the next few years while the rover does experiments.
But as much as we all want to accept that it's not Curiosity's main mission (taking pretty pictures,) it is a very important part of the mission because it's pictures, not data that gets the public's attention, and more importantly, makes future missions to mars a priority for politicians who see a voting public willing to support them.
Why is this marked down? It's a great question because the explanations are not obvious. The camera design relates specifically to the mission requirements & technology available ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_probe#Probe_imagers & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_probes_by_operational_...
It doesn't take that long for it to travel, the data transmission rate is not very fast, and Curiosity doesn't have constant access to the Mars-orbiting satellites that relay the data to Earth.
And besides that, its primary job is not taking pretty pictures.
The optimal thing would be a satellite in areostationary orbit over Mars' equator such that it is always reachable by the lander.
Unfortunately such a satellite wouldn't be well-placed for many other potential landing sites.
http://www.pechorin.com/m/2006/06/13/SONY_Cybershot_E6100_ER...
We can go on and on about familiarity considerations, and planning considerations, and instrumentation considerations, and scientific concerns, etc. It all sounds like excuses after a bit.
Let's reformulate the question: Why not keep the same enclosure, the same lens assembly, the same mechanical parts and simply swap the 2MP sensor for a 20MP sensor?
Further, let's say you are really not sure about that spanking new 20MP sensor, because it is new, you are not familiar with it, and it was not part of the plan drafted 10 years ago, why not add 1 extra camera with a 20MP sensor? If it blows up during the trip or during landing, too bad, it's lost. If it makes it down there safe and sound, you can collect a 10-minute HD sequence that you can stream back to earth over the next 2 years, during down-times, as a very low priority task.
Potential benefit: You offer the world the first and a truly spectacular HD film shot on Mars, in all its splendor, and you inspire a new generation of world explorers, who will ultimately drive man to take another small step, but a giant one for mankind.
Clearly, if that's the best we can do for something as trivial as shooting a video up there, I cannot fathom a man setting foot on Mars in my lifetime. That may be normal, but it saddens me somehow.
You can't "simply" swap the sensor. What about the processor behind it, that interpolates the sensor data and produces a viewable image? Then you need more power for both of those units, and if you're moving to a 20MP sensor, probably size too.
Any kind of change is adding risk to a project that costs billions of dollars.
The rover a one of a kind project, and any issues are set in stone before any kind of real world testing can be done.
If anything, the team should be praised for being conservative enough that they managed to pull it off with success.
You're right that dropping an extra 20 megapixel camera in there would be less risky than changing the main lens; but it's still an unspecced addition to the plan. I don't blame them for choosing not to.
In the future when launch costs are cheaper, people with a hacker approach are going to make rovers on their own. Lots of experimental designs, safety in numbers, and they'll do amazing things.
But when you've got one shot, your risk profile makes you conservative in the extreme.
> Why not keep the same enclosure, the same lens assembly,
> the same mechanical parts and simply swap the 2MP sensor for a 20MP sensor?
> The other advantage of the Truesense Imaging chips was the team's familiarity
> with their behavior. 'We've built-up decades of cumulative experience of working
> with Kodak and now Truesense interline sensors. We know how to clock them and
> drive them - they're a very easy CCD to drive,' says Ravine. A similar level of
> confidence was needed for the cameras’ memory, he says: 'the flash we ended up
> using was because we had a lot of radiation test data for it.'
sigh
I expected more from the people of HN than be stuck in some stupid megapixels race like they're comparing cameras at Best Buy
There, I said it
The first Canon Digital EOS Cameras had a 3Mp sensor. I can bet they wipe the floor with most of today's compact cameras
In a camera, the sensor is much less important than optics. In a 20Mb sensor, the noise in a high radiation environment would probably be much worse as well
You do know that a 20MP sensor is significantly (~10 times) larger than a 2MP sensor, right? So the mechanics would probably simply not fit.
If they are of the same size, the pixel size - area - will be 10 times smaller for 10x more pixels (or a dimension - length x width - reduction of ~3.1x)
Now, noise is bigger if the pixels are smaller. This is one of the ways to radiation harden components: make their features larger.
I'm sure a small sensor like those in a compact camera would be subject to a lot of noise. Bigger sensors like 3/4 or full-frame are usually better (but they're probably using something else)
So yeah, maybe a 20Mp sensor with the apropriate feature size would be huge
I have a 24 megapixel sensor lying on my desk. Its pixels are 6 micron wide, which is large (but not huge), and the thing is about 4 cm by 3 cm in size. I don't know much about cameras but I think that's about the biggest you can fit in a typical consumer camera body.
Also, while obviously technology has improved, the industry doesn't necessarily move towards smaller pixels as a rule. To illustrate that: I work for a company that designs and produces image sensors, and I can tell you that we have one sensor product that has a resolution of just over one megapixel, but it's larger in area than our seventy megapixel product.
It all depends on the specifics of the project, and I can imagine that operating in space has certain constraints that prohibit just swapping in another sensor. These camera's are scientific instruments, and that means different rules apply.
It sounds like excuses? By what standard? That NASA operations don't move at the same speed as consumer technology? By what qualifications do you even have the balls to make a flippant comment like this?
> Further, let's say you are really not sure about that spanking new 20MP sensor, because it is new, you are not familiar with it, and it was not part of the plan drafted 10 years ago, why not add 1 extra camera with a 20MP sensor?
You don't even sound remotely technical when you blurt out some nonsense like this. Ever heard of the phrase: "Fast, good, cheap: pick two"? Well when you're sending shit to other planets it ain't gonna be fast and it ain't gonna be cheap, so it better damn well be good. And not good the way an iphone is good where it dazzles you and your hipster friends to wait in line so they can sell a hundred million of them. Good as in, you build one of them, you get one shot at it, and if you fuck up some small detail hundreds of millions of dollars and years of people lives are utterly wasted.
Anyway, if a NASA operation never gets around to doing such a thing, I bet if SpaceX puts a craft on Mars they'll have the philosophy where they could justify doing it.
And this is only a minor criticism on my part. I have massive appreciation for the NASA engineers and team, and what they just accomplished with the MSL landing. I think this issue is just one little blind spot it's easier for somebody outside their org to see and point out. They clearly nailed all the hardest bits of the mission, and "stuck" their EDL phase, even though it was so seemingly complex. Between SpaceX, the NASA Mars teams, and Planetary Resources, Armadillo Aerospace, etc. I feel these folks are taking us back to the historical trajectory we all thought we were on as kids. They're taking us back into the Space Age again, leaving the static doldrums of the Shuttle/ISS era.
These are still from the navigation cameras. The main camera, not yet deployed, can take 1600x1200 full-color pictures and HD video at 10fps. There's actually two of it, so it can also make 3D images/video. Other features are wide/telephoto lens, panorama stitching and 8GB flash storage. Before complaining about resolution, this is like having a GoPro 3D on Mars, it has plenty of detail.
One of the articles mentions that the cameras are provided by the same manufacturer as the Viking missions, so they must certainly have improved. Expect some awesome images in the coming months!
More info: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/instruments/cameras/mas..., http://msl-scicorner.jpl.nasa.gov/Instruments/Mastcam/, http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/news/msl20110531.html
(Hm, well actually, technically 3D images are possible, just not because there are two cameras. Since rocks tend to not move, Curiosity could just snap one image, drive a bit and snap a second picture.)
Ah - they used the hazard avoidance cameras: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA16002
Just think of age testing - they probably want the camera to last at least 5 years. If the camera you want to send up has been developed in the last year, how do you really do that? In a lab, for reliability testing of new components, typically you temperature cycle equipment, up and down every couple of hours, to simulate time passing, in order to try and compress the time frame required to test the aging rate, but we all know it doesn't really achieve what we want it to too well.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-237#5
It also links some other images (and full image files, rather than a flash viewer).
Edit: Also, the tif I just downloaded has more detail than the WSJ viewer makes available.
So if you are judging based on the quality of the image in the linked story, maybe give it some more time.
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
For space missions you would definitely prefer a camera with interchangeable filters, because then you can also have filters for other spectrum ranges.
[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?FuseAct...
Curiosity Drops In http://www.uahirise.org/images/2012/details/cut/ESP_028256_9...
from: http://www.uahirise.org/releases/msl-descent.php
A Wheel on Mars http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120807.html
landing site: 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
I wonder what the sky of mars looks like. 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.
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!
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?
Its still somehow unbelievable that I'm actually seeing photos from another planet almost realtime.
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.
Too bad it's not enough for a complete 360 panoramic :(
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."
Don't forget that the software can fail at any time during the year it takes for the software to install, too. Any failure before installation or after would require the project to be rebuilt for millions of dollars and months of delays.
Given that receiving a confirmation that your input was accepted already takes hours, and that returning output as textual data will serve the project's purpose for the next ten years, then the company should probably not delay the launch of the project even further just to be able to return .BMP screen shots of the text files, just to impress the media with how much raw data was found.