New Mars Cameras

[Tye 1on]

Those images are from the "Hazard Avoidance cameras."

More images and info here
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ms...dexEvents.html

right on, for some reason when I re-read 406's first post it gave me the impression he was involved with all of Curiosity's cameras...

[406]

^^^nope just the color ones.

I got many low res versions of frames from the EDL movie in today. So stoked it worked, first one that came in has an awesome view of the heat shield falling away. I think there is a press conference at 4 pm pacific with the boss, should be on NASA tv. Really cool images and can't wait for the full resolution and the full movie in HD.

I'm off to try and sleep until shift start again tonight at 11 pm.

[406]

[SchralphMacchio]

^ that's freaking awesome. I was worried about that part of it disrupting the dynamics of the craft as it got lower into atmosphere.

Having failed out of a graduate-level automatic control systems class, I have mad respect for how the entire thing went down. You guys have no idea how crazy it is to model all of the possible system disturbances, sensor inputs, and control algorithms into a jumbled mess of codeable transfer functions. Automatic controls is probably the first class I ever took where I didn't think I was capable of learning the material, and I passed relativistic quantum mechanics in my undergrad ...

[spook]

that is super cool

[406]

vid of the low res:


Note that it is just the low res version and eventually it will be back in HD. Also this is only about half the frames from when the vehicle was in the air. But you can make out the heat shield falling away, the dark brown dune field between the rover and Mt. Sharp, dust and stuff blown up by the engines, the wheels extending.

[sb]

FKNA we want moar!

[406]

from our camera on the arm, mahli:

The arm is stowed and the camera cover is closed. Good thing, because landing kicked up a lot of dust ( as seen in the thumbnail movie) and the cover is dirty.
First full resolution landing movie frame came in last night also. Hopefully it will be in the 10 am press conference on nasa tv along with the mahli image.
Also got in a image of the landing site from our 6 meter/pixel camera on the MRO orbiter. Can see hardware on the ground. The higher resolution camera on MRO has a great picture of all the hardware.

[systemoverblow'd]

^Oh SHIT! I can not wait for more.

[406]

forgot to add the mahli is looking North toward the rim and the plan is to drive south toward the mountain. And there are more than normal jpeg compression artifacts due to the dust and higher than normal compression factor due to the low data rates in the first few sols

The mast should deploy today, so hopefully will have some photo's from the mastcams tonight.

[Fuzz]

Awesome descent video and info! With a maggot insider, I'm expecting to get a preview of images here before the public, you know!

My 5-year old son got so excited watching the "Seven Minutes of Terror" video (he kept saying "That is so cool!"), he then watched all of Apollo 13 in one sitting. I kept explaining what was happening throughout the movie and he was completely engrossed (he then kept relaying the information to my wife).

Schralph, I agree with the respect for EDL -- so many variables to model and "teach" the robot to do on its own.

[Fuzz]

Damn, the latest image from MRO showing the full landing site with all the components strewn about is pretty spectacular (on NASA TV right now).

[BigDaddy]

Cool stuff... thx 406.

[406]

This is the full size version of the first low res frame I posted:

looks like the forum reduces the size, so open in new tab if you want to size full size.

This is a clip from the movie after we are on the surface:

It is slightly out of focus because we are less than a meter from the surface and it wasn't designed to work on the surface. Also the exposure time was set to manual and for the flight in, not working in shadow on the surface. The is the wheel in the upper left, notice some dirt inside.

This is from our 6 m/pixel camera in orbit, CTX ( that I operated prior to the MSL cameras), shows before and after of the impact site of the ballast ejected from EDL:


JPL's engineering cameras got some good shots also. The mast deployed.
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/6...-full_full.jpg

blast zone, also shows a bit of the arm:
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/6...-full_full.jpg

The mastcam 360 color mosiac should be running around now on Mars and hopefully I will get some thumb size images in tonight. It will take awhile for the full size images to come down.

[BigDaddy]

406, I watched the press conference today (as well as yesterday) as I am completely enthralled. You and your team must be ecstatic. Is everyone just on cloud nine? Can't wait for the high res panoramas...

[406]

Funny CNN interview with my boss:


When he said, "out of his pocket" pretty sure it was out of mine also, because part of that would have been put toward employee bonuses if we didn't have to pay for the camera...Not that I'm complaining. Also, none of the photos CNN shows are from our cameras, ha.

[summit]

Awesome stuff!

[systemoverblow'd]

Some farker stitched together a self portrait of curiosity http://www.flickr.com/photos/keithga...n/photostream/

[406]

The mastcam 34 mm thumbs from the 360 mosaic came in last night:

click to see full size. The full frames will be 8 time bigger, but will take several days to downlink. The 2 lighter colored areas are blast marks from the landing engines. This is "true color" and I only did a stretch in photoshop, so what you would see if you are stand there. The top of Mt. Sharp is cut off. The plan is the rover boots into a new flight software over the next few sols, so no new activities for the next few days...on the plus side I get to go home for a couple days.

[SchralphMacchio]

white balance in photoshop

So that is really interesting ... with the Martian atmosphere, do you use the same CCT bias for mid-sol lighting as you would on earth? I don't know how similar or different the scattering of light is in the Martian atmosphere, but I imagine different.

Did you guys design a neutral gray reference into the body of the rover or lens, or other?

How do the morning and evening light scattering/refraction compare to midday on Mars?

[406]

^^^I used the wrong term, I just did a color level balance to brighten things up.

[406]

So that is really interesting ... with the Martian atmosphere, do you use the same CCT bias for mid-sol lighting as you would on earth? I don't know how similar or different the scattering of light is in the Martian atmosphere, but I imagine different.

Did you guys design a neutral gray reference into the body of the rover or lens, or other?

How do the morning and evening light scattering/refraction compare to midday on Mars?

Each camera has a calibration target. The mardi is the white patch inside the heat shield, you can see it in the full frame I posted.

The camera on the arm has:


This deck mosaic from the mastcam during ATLO shows the mastcam cal target, sun dial looking thing on the left:


This is a thumb of the cal target on Mars with no processing done. Came in last night:


I think some people want to take pictures of the cal targets at all times of the day. In my opinion, it is a waste of downlink and would rather get photos of Mars. I'm not sure it is really useful, but I'm not really an expert on that type of stuff.

[SchralphMacchio]

That's soooo cool!
The light would definitely change throughout the day, and if color band processing of pigmentation is necessary for guessing at mineral content of various rocks, or looking for evidence of chemical weathering etc ... I don't know, that's just a random guess at the top of my head. Like, if you were able to correlate color data with mineral data from the laser and other tools - then you could take high res images of areas you can't reach, and make reasonable assumptions about rock type, weathering, etc.

I'm not a geologist so I'm just making this stuff up ...

[uglymoney]

Awesome! Just came out of the woods and checked this thread. Can't wait to view all the links. Thanks and congrats 406.

Sent from my HTC Hero S using TGR Forums

[406]

79-image mosaic was acquired by the 34-millimeter Mastcam over about an hour of time on Aug. 8, 2012 PDT. The full mosaic consists of 130 1,200 by 1,200 pixel full-color images, but this version includes all the images that have been returned to Earth so far. The black areas indicate images not yet returned by the rover. Except we didn't take any photos of the rover deck.

open in new tab and zoom 100% to see at native size. Colors are unmodified from those returned by the camera.