My new temporary daily routine here at HiRISE Operations:

1. Validate the image data that have arrived since last time I checked. Are the raw image files we receive gap-free and are the file sizes as expected? Did the Uplink team command the HiRISE camera properly? So far, they have a perfect record!
2. Keep checking to see if new data is arriving for processing.
3. Are our automated processes running properly?
4. Is the data being stored correctly and can the team access the images in the appropriate places?
5. Finally! Actually look at the new images. In between “oohs” and “ahhs” check to see that the images look good. Did our automated software handle the data correctly? Do I need to do any manual reprocessing of image data?
6. Report my findings to the team via email.
7. Get up and see what the scientists and other team members are up to.
8. Eat some Cheetos.
9. Repeat as necessary.
10. A million other tasks.
    

By the end of the day I am covered in Cheeto dust (joking) and amazed by some new vista of Mars (seriously).

What is it we find so amazing? I can only speak for myself, but in observation TRA_000823_1720, the boulders lying about casting shadows indicate just how “Hi” resolution the HiRISE camera can go. In the second observation – TRA_000825_2665 – the stack of water ice and dust layers and the patches of water frost make for a distinctive landscape. At this resolution, there is a marked difference between the north polar region on Mars and the pictures I have seen of the Earth’s own polar regions.

To me, this is the great joy of planetary science: seeing new vistas that are at once familiar and unfamiliar, and never, ever routine.

Saturday’s front-page of the Arizona Daily Star featured a good article about HiRISE with a humorous photo of Chris S. shoulder surfing as Anjani P. worked.

This is of course a typical scene as these images are coming down. Someone will be “driving”, so to speak: browsing, “surfing”, zooming, panning, contrast stretching and more, using the amazing image processing tools that our partners at the USGS in Flagstaff have developed. And someone else (or two, or three, or a dozen) will be standing over their shoulders, watching and collaborating. Or in Chris’s case, probably making jokingly snide comments.

But it makes for a world of difference between what you, out there, the public, experience and what we experience. Bridging that gap is a challenge for our public outreach team as the mission continues. We’ve got the benefit of having the brightest minds in planetary geology offering live commentary and analysis using the finest tools and top-of-the-line workstations. The experience of seeing the image is very dynamic; jumping between resolutions, zooming in to dunes and boulders and rocky outcrops, “stretching” the image to pull out detail hidden in dark shadow or blended in on bright surfaces.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that while our excitement is evident from the posts here, communicating exactly why we’re excited is much more difficult. Unless you could be here shoulder surfing….

I certainly breathed a sigh of relief when we got confirmation from the telemetry that our first image was successfully acquired. Now we’re waiting in suspense to actually receive the image here at HiROC (HiRISE Operations Center). We have some computers set up in the center room so that we can all crowd around and see the image this afternoon.

I share an office with some of our downlink operations people, and right now I’m listening to them discuss their plans for the image processing that will take place this afternoon. They can tell you more about the details of the processing, but essentially right now they are making sure that all the plans and procedures are in place so that things go smoothly this afternoon. The last couple of days have been filled with testing, testing, and more testing.