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PSP_001406_2680 looks like the higher relief was saturated (too bright for the camera settings), possibly due to CO2 frost cover.

PSP_001432_2015 is really cool; it’s on the edge of Olympus Mons, on the steep scarp leading to the much more gradual rise of the shield volcano. The rippled rolling dunes in PSP_001432_2610 are in striking contrast to the rocky floors between them. Check out the amazing slot canyons fractures along the left side in PSP_001440_2175.

The atmospheric haze in PSP_001444_2610 is incredible, though it does screw up the color registration on the bottom half of the image. This is 30 degrees East of the aforementioned dune location, but the same type of terrain. On some of these images, there will be CTX (Context camera) images. With similar haze conditions, over on UnmannedSpaceflight.com, Nirgal shows a colorized CTX image from MRO orbit 3624 for which there is a HiRISE view.

There are so many other great images in this set. The Holden Crater image deserves special mention. This area is on the candidate list for MSL, as mentioned in a previous post. A stereo print was made of this region at about the same resolution you see here; it was amazingly sharp, like looking into a scale model or diorama.

Again, feel free to post your favorites here in the comments.

Updated (2008-Apr-10)

I finally got around to trying it out, and it’s very easy to set up following his instructions. It allows you to see the footprints of acquired HiRISE images on a larger context map, and the Google [Planet] interface is really easy to use. Clicking on a red H footprint gives you a short description of the image, and a link right to our image release page, where you can browse or download the image products. CTX footprints are available, too. If I’m understanding this right, these KML files pull all currently released data from the PDS, so whenever we release data, the new stuff is automatically included.

The basemaps aren’t in 3-D (yet – maybe someday?!), so the perspective view isn’t much use, but you can kind of trick yourself into thinking it looks 3-D with the shaded relief maps. You can “fly” over the planet, zooming in & out, which is really fun.

I had trouble trying to get two basemaps visible at once (colorized MOLA elevation over the greyscale MDIM). With just one basemap, though, it works just fine, and it’s very fast (this probably depends a lot on your internet connection).

One really nice thing about the Google interface is when there are two overlapping footprints (which all of our stereo images are), clicking on them expands the choices and allows you to pick one or the other. Other tools I’ve used don’t handle this as nicely, and sometimes it’s impossible to select the “bottom” one.

Nice job, Ross & Google!

A couple of weeks a go, we started the planning process by defining scientifically interesting areas on Mars to image. At this point, we didn’t know exactly where the MRO spacecraft would be in its orbit around Mars when the imaging sequence would begin (two weeks later). Consequently, we chose large regions of interest, rather than pinpointing the exact locations of each image that we wanted to acquire. Once MRO’s orbit pattern during the imaging sequence was predicted, we then carefully decided where within each region of interest HiRISE should acquire image. With this preliminary plan in hand, we then discussed our imaging desires with the teams for the other MRO science instruments, such as CTX (the context imager) and CRISM (the multispectral imager).

After a week of iterations and teleconferences, we had a working schedule of observations that incorporated the imaging desires of all the MRO science instruments. We then undertook the process of carefully designing each scheduled HiRISE observation (image). Planning a HiRISE image involves setting the proper camera parameters so that we take a good image. We need to set parameters such as exposure duration, the aerial extent of the image, the image resolution and data compression. Each parameter needs to be carefully weighed against factors such as the brightness of the surface of Mars, the clarity of the Martian atmosphere, the scientific objective of the image and the amount of data storage space available on the spacecraft.

After an intense week of designing our HiRISE observations, we sent these camera commands to JPL. At JPL, the commands were tested on a computer simulator (the OTB or ‘Orbiter Test Bed’). The purpose of this test was to ensure that each command would execute flawlessly on the spacecraft (and they did). These commands were transmitted to MRO earlier this morning (Thursday 9/28/06). Mars is currently about 309 million kilometers (about 192 million miles) from the Earth. At this distance, it took about 22 minutes for our commands to travel from Earth to Mars. These commands will automatically run on the spacecraft tomorrow and begin returning fantastic images of Mars. Tomorrow should be an exciting day!