That ends today, though. Mars recently came out of solar conjunction and operations have been ramping up. We ought to be starting our first post-conjunction image at around 9 PM Tucson time (MST) tonight, February 22.

I mention this fact to draw your attention to a pretty cool feature of the Google Earth desktop application. It’s been around for a while, but you might not have heard about it. It’s called Live from Mars, and it shows you the orbits of MRO and Odyssey as they’re orbiting Mars right now. You can also see the image footprints for upcoming HiRISE (MRO) and THEMIS (Odyssey) observations. Even cooler, you can virtually ride along with MRO or Odyssey, your point of view tracking along those orbits.

To set it up, launch the latest version of the Google Earth desktop application. Find the little menu button that looks like Saturn, and click it to drop down the menu. Select Mars.

Once Mars comes into view, go to the Layers panel and open up the Mars Gallery group. You should see Live from Mars. Open up that group, and you’ll see Live from Odyssey and Live from MRO. Open up the Live from MRO group and you’ll find MRO Orbit, Fly Along, and HiRISE Footprints. Activate those and you’ll see a segment of the MRO orbit; you might see a HiRISE footprint or two, but our images are so small compared to the size of Mars that you might need to zoom in a bit to find them.

If you double-click the Fly Along item, your point of view will switch to that of MRO orbiting Mars. As you travel along, you’ll come across upcoming HiRISE observations, such as the one called out in the above image.

Cool, isn’t it?

I should note that these are not planned to be actual HiRISE images; I was using HiPlan in test mode while working on the display of the individual HiRISE CCD footprints.

Take a look at this screenshot. It covers a small region of Mars roughly one degree across and slightly less than a degree tall:

The low-resolution background is THEMIS daytime infrared imagery at 256 pixels per degree; it is an amalgamation of several such infrared THEMIS images. This view was displayed in HiPlan at 1024 pixels per degree, so the background looks quite blocky.

The sharper region down the center of the screenshot is the upper portion of a single THEMIS visible spectrum image. It is a much higher-resolution image, so it appears quite a bit sharper than the background. The black border surrounding the visible spectrum image is an artifact of the simplified image processing used in HiPlan; in order to show quickly multiple sets of data overlain atop one another, corners almost literally have to be cut.

The colorful, translucent rectangle cutting across the crater is a typical HiRISE “footprint”—that is, it is the area of Mars that would be imaged by our camera were we actually to take this picture.

You might know that HiRISE consists of 14 individual CCDs, arranged in a row 10 CCDs across with the remaining four positioned in the middle of the array. This arrangement is illustrated in the screenshot by the reddish and greenish rectangles within the blue rectangle.

An additional level of zoom in the planning software shows these red and green rectangles more clearly. This second screenshot covers an area about a half-degree wide and a half-degree high; the image data are shown at 2048 pixels per degree:

Each of the red rectangles represents one of the ten red-filter HiRISE CCDs. You probably notice that there are only eight visible. The other two are hidden by the green rectangles.

Each of the green rectangles represents one of the blue-green filter HiRISE CCDs. As mentioned, they’re covering up the central red-filter CCD rectangles. They’re also covering up the two near-infrared filter (NIR) CCD rectangles, which would be drawn a translucent white. If I had set these HiRISE images up without the blue-green CCDs active, you’d see the NIR CCDs clearly.

The next two screenshots form another pair from roughly the same region of Mars. The first is with HiPlan zoomed to 1024 pixels per degree, covering about one degree of width of the surface of Mars:

The blue lines running through this screenshot canted slightly to the HiRISE footprint are THEMIS footprints. I’ve chosen not to have HiPlan fill them in.

The second is the same area zoomed to 2048 pixels per degree; it covers a region about a half-degree across:

What about the blue regions at the ends of the HiRISE footprints? In order to coordinate HiRISE observations with those planned by other instruments aboard MRO, we always plan on slightly larger observations than we really take. In addition to making the coordination planning easier, it allows us to change the size of our observation or move it around slightly after the spacecraft-level instructions have been sent, but before our actual instrument instructions are delivered.

Normally, we center our actual observation within the blue planning zone. We could easily adjust it, however. In the case of the second set of screenshots, for instance, we might decide to slide our observation downward towards the couple of small craters near the bottom of the planning zone. We can do so without interfering with the operation of the spacecraft as a whole and without having to re-plan our coordination with the other instruments.

I started this post by claiming it might give you a feel for the size of a HiRISE image. I haven’t forgotten. If you click on one of the thumbnails above, you will get a full-size rendition of the planning screenshot. Each screenshot is 1024 pixels wide.

Take a look at just one of the red-filter HiRISE CCDs (or one of the blue-green filter CCDs; I’m not picky). If HiRISE were to take the picture planned here in these screenshots, you could fit two of those screenshots, side-by-side, across that red-filter CCD outline, and you could fit a few dozen down its length.

We’ll be able to display acquired HiRISE images in HiPlan in the near future, much like we can see acquired THEMIS images, though we’ll probably never be able to display them at full resolution. They’re too big!

One final note: HiPlan is built atop an application developed up at ASU called JMARS. Not coincidentally, the THEMIS team uses JMARS to plan their images.

That’s GuyMac on the left, HiCommander (me!) in the middle, and HiKu on the right.

HiKu is part of the operations staff on the uplink side of things. He’s on the team that does the targeting and the planning. What was he doing on a Saturday? Same thing he does every day: targeting and planning.

GuyMac and I are part of the software development team—we write the programs the ops team uses to do their job. GuyMac works primarily for the downlink group. He spent the day on a program called HiVali, which will be used by the downlink ops team to make sure a given HiRISE image accomplished its goal.

I work for the uplink group. I spent the day working on a program with the second greatest HiRISE software name: the HOGG. That’s the HiRISE Observation Generation GUI. The “the” is an important part of its name, by they way. You don’t use HOGG to generate HiRISE camera parameters. You use the HOGG.

A lot of our HiRISE tools have funny names; the most common way to name a piece of software here is to get a one-word description of its function and then add “Hi” to it. The planning software? HiPlan. The commanding software? HiCommand. The validation software? HiVali. The camera temperature modeler? HiTemp.

I like “the HOGG” for three reasons. One, who doesn’t like hearing their peers use such a ridiculous word to talk about something serious? Two, it breaks the HiRISE naming convention. And three? I get to correct people and point out that the “the” is part of the name. Still, it’s only my second favorite HiRISE software name. My favorite?

That’d be the HiRISE photometry predictor.

HIPHOP.

I’ll write more about these tools in the coming weeks.

Every HiRISE image (or “observation”) is identified by a unique ID. Think of this observation ID as the name of the image. The basic form of the ID has three parts: a mission phase, an orbit number, and a target code. Our first transition phase image, for example, is TRA_000823_1720.

The mission phase is a three-letter abbreviation. “TRA” is the transition phase. Starting in November, you’ll be seeing “PSP” for “primary science phase,” which lasts for two Earth years.

The orbit number is a six-digit, zero-padded number. “000823″ is the eight hundred twenty-third orbit of MRO around Mars. MRO is in a roughly polar orbit around Mars, meaning the orbit is nearly perpendicular to the planet’s equator; this sort of orbit is typical of missions designed for mapping, because it provides coverage of the entire planet. The orbit number increments by one whenever we cross the planet’s equator on the nighttime side.

The target code indicates the target of the observation. If the number is between 0000 and 3595, it is the angle between the nighttime equator and the latitude of the center of the observation, multiplied by 10. It is measured to the nearest half-degree. The nighttime equator is 0000, the south pole is 0900, the daytime equator is 1800, and the north pole is 2700. 1720 is at latitude 8° S.

If the target code is between 9000 and 9303, it indicates an off-planet target, such as Deimos, Phobos, or a star.

And that’s how you identify a HiRISE image. In practice, the HiRISE team talks about them by dropping the mission phase code and the orbit number padding. Our first image is simply “823 1720″ amongst the team. Formally, however, it will always be TRA_000823_1720.

Wayne Sydney (LMA) and Roy Gladden (JPL) taught me how to talk to our spacecraft. Ira Becker (BATC), Rick Battistelli (BATC), and Steve Tarr (BATC) taught me how to talk to our instrument. Peter Xayprayseuth (JPL) bends so far over backwards for us he appears to be standing upright. He and Curt Eggemeyer (JPL) make sure what I’m saying to the spacecraft isn’t complete gibberish. Mark Johnson (LMA) checked my math. Finally, Michael Weiss-Malik (ASU), Eric Engle (ASU), Saadat Anwar (ASU), and Noel Gorelick (ASU) built a fantastic piece of software for me to hook into for our observation planning.

There are dozens more, of course, but these are the ones that directly apply to me, and without them, none of this would have happened. So thanks, guys. If I were to wear a hat, it would be off to you.