Comments on: MRO reaches its mapping orbit!

By: Zen Punk

Zen Punk — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 06:43:01 +0000

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) consists of 2 narrow angle camera heads (NACs) to provide 0.5 m-scale panchromatic images over a 5-km swath, a wide angle camera head (WAC) to provide images at a scale of 100 m in seven color bands, and a common Sequence and Compressor System (SCS) to sequence image acquisition by all camera heads and compress their data before transmission to the spacecraft.

I don’t know what Panchromatic means, but it looks like LRO will be able to image the S-IVB’s and LEM descent stages on the moon.

By: CR

CR — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 03:18:40 +0000

Actually, I think there’s an entry or two about that right here at Bad Astronomy!
http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/hoagland/face.html

By: Troy

Troy — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 01:09:17 +0000

A few years back they actually did acheive better resolution images of the ‘face’ on mars…turns out the face looks more like a butte! Of course Hoagland prefers the lower resolution images; there’s always some way to see exactly what you want to see. I don’t have a link but should be easy to find on the internet.

By: Irishman

Irishman — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 21:33:54 +0000

I was thinking, I want to see those glass worms at 1m res!

By: Will.

Will. — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 18:37:08 +0000

“Then JPL would have to prepare a separate mission to send the pocket calculator down to Mars.” Yeah, O.K. I’d be the “your” attached to the pocket calculator. For shure.

By: Lorne Ipsum

Lorne Ipsum — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 18:21:52 +0000

Note to GAry 7…

From what I’ve read, our spy sats *CAN’T* read the image of a license plate; you need an SR-71 for that. Spy sats have resolution primarily limited by the size of atmospheric convection cells, about 4 – 6″. To get something like this at Mars, you’d need to send something about the size / mass of Hubble — WAY too heavy to send there, given current technology.

As for MRO, it about has the best resolution we can make use of, given limitations of the current DSN. Mind you, resolution doesn’t do you much good if you can’t get the pictures back. As a result, a trade that has to be made is resolution vs. coveerage. Even at MRO’s resolution (a lot better than for previous birds, but nowhere near 6″), bandwidth limitations mean that MRO can only image 2% of the surface of Mars at full resolution in its 5 year nominal lifespan.

Future missions will be able to send vastly more data back, once spacecraft are flying (and DSN is supporting) laser communications, but with the current state of RF technology, this is the best that can be done.

Lorne

By: kit

kit — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 18:15:58 +0000

“…My idea of hi res is being able to read the numbers on your pocket calculator from orbit…”

Then JPL would have to prepare a separate mission to send the pocket calculator down to Mars.