[meteorite-list] What to Expect When Curiosity Starts Snapping Pictures

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2012 15:06:38 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201208032206.q73M6c34022309_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-226

What to Expect When Curiosity Starts Snapping Pictures
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
August 03, 2012

If a group of tourists piled out of a transport vehicle onto the surface
of Mars, they'd no doubt start snapping pictures wildly. NASA's
Curiosity rover, set to touch down on the Red Planet the evening of Aug.
5 PDT (early morning EDT), will take a more careful approach to
capturing its first scenic views.

The car-size rover's very first images will come from the one-megapixel
Hazard-Avoidance cameras (Hazcams) attached to the body of the rover.
Once engineers have determined that it is safe to deploy the rover's
Remote Sensing Mast and its high-tech cameras, a process that may take
several days, Curiosity will begin to survey its exotic surroundings.

"A set of low-resolution gray scale Hazcam images will be acquired
within minutes of landing on the surface," said Justin Maki of NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Once all of the critical
systems have been checked out by the engineering team and the mast is
deployed, the rover will image the landing site with higher-resolution
cameras."

Maki led the development of Curiosity's 12 engineering cameras -- eight
Hazcams at the front and back of the rover, and four Navigation cameras
(Navcams) at the top of the rover's "look-out" mast. All the engineering
cameras acquire black-and-white pictures from left and right stereo
"eyes," which are merged to provide three-dimensional information. Half
of the cameras are backups, meaning there's one set for each of the
rover's A- and B-side redundant computers.

The very first images are likely to arrive more than two hours after
landing, due to the timing of NASA's signal-relaying Odyssey orbiter.
They will be captured with the left and right Hazcams at the back and
front of the rover, and they will not yet be full-resolution (the two
images arriving on Earth first are "thumbnail" copies, which are 64 by
64 pixels in size). The Hazcams are equipped with very wide-angle,
fisheye lenses, initially capped with clear dust covers. The covers are
designed to protect the cameras from dust that may be kicked up during
landing; they are clear just in case they don't pop off as expected.

These first views will give engineers a good idea of what surrounds
Curiosity, as well as its location and tilt. "Ensuring that the rover is
on stable ground is important before raising the rover's mast," said
Mission Manager Jennifer Trosper at JPL. "We are using an entirely new
landing system on this mission, so we are proceeding with caution."

Color pictures from the rover's Mars Descent Imager, or MARDI, acquired
as the rover descends to the Martian surface, will help pinpoint the
rover's location. Initial images from MARDI are expected to be released
Aug. 6, the day after landing. These will also be in the form of
thumbnails (in the case of the science cameras, thumbnails can vary in
size, with the largest being 192 pixels wide by 144 pixels high). One
full-resolution image may also be returned at this time.

Additional color views of the planet's surface are expected the morning
of Aug. 7 from the Mars Hand Lens Imager, or MAHLI, one of five devices
on the rover's Inspector Gadget-like arm. The camera is designed to take
close-up pictures of rocks and soil, but can also take images out to the
horizon. When Curiosity lands and its arm is still stowed, the
instrument will be pointed to the side, allowing it to capture an
initial color view of the Gale Crater area.

Once Curiosity's mast is standing tall, the Navcams will begin taking
one-megapixel stereo pictures 360 degrees around the rover as well as
images of the rover deck. These cameras have medium-angle, 45-degree
fields of views and could resolve the equivalent of a golf ball lying 82
feet (25 meters) away. They are designed to survey the landscape fairly
quickly, and, not only can they look all around but also up and down.
Navigation camera pictures are expected to begin arriving on Earth about
three days after landing if the mast is deployed on schedule.

Like the Hazcams, Navcam images are used to obtain three-dimensional
information about the Martian terrain. Together, they help the
scientists and engineers make decisions about where and how to drive the
rover and which rocks to examine with instruments that identify chemical
ingredients. "A large part of the surface mission is conducted using the
images returned from the cameras," said Maki.

Also, about three days after landing, the narrower field-of-view Mast
Cameras (Mastcams) are expected to start snapping their first shots.
These two-megapixel color cameras will reveal the rover's new home in
exquisite detail. Small thumbnail versions of the pictures will be sent
down first with an initial high-resolution panorama expected more than a
week later.

The camera of the Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument will provide
a telescopic view of targets at a distance.

As the mission progresses, the entire suite of cameras and science
instruments will work together to hunt for clues to the mystery of Mars
and help answer the long-standing puzzle of whether our
next-door-neighbor planet has ever offered environmental conditions
favorable for microbial life.

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory and its Curiosity rover are a project of
NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The mission is managed by JPL, a
division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
Curiosity was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.
To view Curiosity's latest images, visit http://www.nasa.gov/ and
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/gallery-indexEvents.html
. Raw images will appear when available at mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/raw .
For information about NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission and its
Curiosity rover, visit: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/msl,
http://www.nasa.gov/mars and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ . You can
follow the mission on Facebook and on Twitter at
http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and
http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity .

Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Whitney.clavin at jpl.nasa.gov

2012-226
Received on Fri 03 Aug 2012 06:06:38 PM PDT