We have now released all HiRISE images taken prior to August’s spacecraft safe mode event! Here are some statistics about our October 2009 release, which includes the images the HiRISE camera took of the Martian surface between Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) orbits 14,200 to 14,499 (August 6, 2009 – August 26, 2009):

• 446 RDRs, 0.18 TB
• 6238 EDRs, 0.18 TB
• 5126 RDR Extras, 0.28 TB
• 12,464 EDR Extras 2.5 GB
• 16 Anaglyphs 0.001 TB

Totals for this release: 24,274 images, 0.62 TB

This brings our total released product numbers and data volume to:

• 23,122 RDRs, 12.2 TB
• 323,358 EDRs, 10.6 TB
• 196,058 RDR Extras, 15.6 TB
• 625,233, EDR Extras, 0.1 TB
• 1,192 Anaglyphs 0.5 TB

Total: 1,167,771 images, 37.7 TB

Just because we are not currently taking images does not mean we are slacking off. The Downlink team is busy reprocessing and validating all ESP observations. After reprocessing, these observations will all benefit from the same improvements we have made to our processing pipelines over the past several months. I also recently started reprocessing PSP observations, which is a much larger data set that will sync improvement to our processing pipelines made over the past few years! We are keeping busy and we are even getting help from the Uplink team while they wait for the go ahead to start taking new images of the Martian surface. Of course we all want that to happen as quickly as possible!

Lately I’ve been helping out with the tours that we give of our operations center (HiROC) lobby and some public talks. Depending on the audience, we usually tell them a little bit about the HiRISE camera, its capabilities, and the MRO mission in general. We also talk about what we personally do at the operations center. The full-scale model of the camera and the “HiWall” are really nice exhibits for visitors. The highlight is usually when we show off what HiRISE has accomplished: color images, 3-D anaglyphs (everyone likes wearing those glasses!), and the recent addition of the fly-through movies has been very popular.

My favorite part is when people have questions for us – even when I don’t know the answers. Because, honestly, that’s what science is – we don’t always have the answers, but that’s what makes it exciting! It’s also fun to find out which aspects of the mission inspire other people, and I get a different perspective on what they think is interesting (versus just what I think is interesting!). Some of the questions are really good, too! We were talking with some middle-school students from El Paso, Texas, and their questions were so astute. One girl asked, “Does Mars have plate tectonics?” Another good question was, “How do we know about the interior of Mars?” These are great questions, and HiRISE is helping scientists to answer these and other questions, along with data from many other instruments studying Mars.

In case you were curious about these particular questions, like these kids were, here are some short answers and references for more information:
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HiRISE is (finally!) on Twitter! (Now that we’re getting a break during Solar Conjunction, we have time to catch up with trends in technology. )

If you’re not familiar with it, Twitter is kind of like a mini-blog. Posts are limited to 140 characters, which keeps things short & simple. In a way, it’s like updating your “status” in chat or on Facebook. You can use it many different ways – commands work via SMS text messaging, so you can get or make updates with a cell phone or other mobile device; it can hook into instant messaging, chat programs or social networking sites; there are widgets you can download, or simply make & read updates through the website.

To see a great example of how this can work, check out the Phoenix Twitter feed – that was a lot of fun, and also provided timely, award-winning coverage. We don’t aim quite that high, but we hope to give you a heads up about releases, important events, and maybe some random things just for fun. (Suggestions for tweets? Add them in a comment below!)

So follow HIRISE on Twitter to see what we’re doing now!

Join us this Sunday, May 25th from 3-8 PM on the University of Arizona campus for a celebration of the landing of our sister mission, Phoenix. The Kuiper building, Sonett lobby, (that’s where HiROC is located, and where we’ll be) and Flandrau planetarium will be open to the public. There will be speakers from the Phoenix and HiRISE teams, children’s activities, NASA TV running for live updates on the status of the lander, telescopes set up for viewing the sun, tours of the buildings, planetarium shows, and cake!

Detailed schedule of events:
http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/calendar/calendar.php?ID=107

We’ll be thinking of the Phoenix team during this critical step – we’ve got our fingers crossed, wishing you the best!

It seems the landslides in PSP_007338_2640 have caught a lot of attention!

There has been a lot of online and print news coverage: CNN, Time, Fox News, Astronomy, Space.com, New Scientist, National Geographic, and our local Arizona Daily Star, among many others. The New York Times made a really nice slide show that includes the avalanche, the Earth-Moon image, as well as other great images from our big PDS release. Blogs are talking about it (Cumbrian Sky and the Bad Astronomy Blog, to name just two). People over at unmannedspaceflight.com are discussing the avalanches a lot, too. (I’m sure there are tons I’ve missed – apologies – if you feel left out, post it in a comment below!)

A co-worker heard NPR’s Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me featured a question about the avalanches on Saturday. It was even the Astronomy Picture of the Day yesterday!

I’ve talked personally to a lot of people about it, too. It’s amazing how it’s caught everyone’s interest. I think most people who see it for the first time have the same “Holy crap!” reaction that we all had when we first saw it here at HiROC. Then they start trying to figure out what’s going on, what caused it, what it means, how we can take more data and look at past images to narrow down different hypotheses… which is exactly the process that scientists go through!

The best part of the story, I think, is how the landslide was serendipitously captured in an image, and then accidentally noticed! HiRISE has sent back such an incredible volume of highly detailed data, no one person has time to study it all in full resolution. We’ve released 17 Terabytes, thousands of images, and it’s very likely that more surprises like this are waiting to be discovered in them. So go look at more HiRISE images; let us know what you find! We can’t wait to see how Mars can surprise us further.

Thanks for being as excited about HiRISE and Mars as we are!

On Thursday, April 19, 2007 I presented “HiRISE: The People’s Camera” at the Prescott Public Library in Prescott, Arizona. The library and the Prescott Astronomy Club put together a wonderful sequence of talks and star parties as part of International Astronomy Week.

My presentation went well. For some reason I was especially nervous right before the talk, but immediately after I started my nervousness went away, most likely because my hosts and the audience were so receptive. I am not sure how many people attended, but the room was full. At the end of the presentation there were a lot of great questions from the audience, including basic questions about Mars, questions about our current understanding of Mars, questions about HiRISE and its capabilities, and questions about the future of space exploration. I put my foot in my mouth only once, when I referred to the Deep Space Network (DSN) as “antiquated”. A former JPL engineer in the audience politely and informatively corrected my word choice.

A couple weeks before the talk we snail mailed two color printouts of PSP_001336_1560 – “Delta in Eberswalde” – to Prescott for framing. One image is the entire black-and-white image with central color swath, and the other is a zoomed-in color subscene. During setup prior to the presentation, the frame shop delivered the images, and they had done a fantastic framing job! People were naturally drawn to the images before and after the presentation and I answered lots of questions about them.

I promised I would place the PowerPoint presentation online, and here it is. The PowerPoint presentation file is about 22 MB in size. I have notes in the notes section of the slides, including information about the images used as well as their URLs. I want to especially thank Stuart Heggie for allowing me to use his beautiful astrophotography image “Conjunction of Moon, Venus and Mars – Dec 1 2002“. His image helped me to make a point about the history of Mars observation.

Thank you to my hosts, including Meghan and Douglas, and everyone who attend a delicious pre-presentation pizza dinner, including the current and former presidents of the Prescott Astronomy Club and their spouses, the library’s Adult Services Director, and the talented graphic designer of many of their brochures and other materials (including a t-shirt I will take a picture of soon). The audience deserves my thanks because they had such great questions and were incredibly good-natured. Thank you, everyone!