A couple of weeks ago I promised to have images from the HiRISE camera now that Mars Express Reconnaissance Orbiter has reached its mapping orbit– the image above is one! It’s a crater on Mars from HiRISE compared to the Mars Orbiter Camera on board the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, until now the highest resolution camera sent to Mars. Look at the difference!
The HiRISE site has lots more images, and you can also see more on the NASA site, and also on this NASA page.
I’m afraid I’m short on time right now, so I can’t spend more time on this, but there will be lots more to discuss as more fantastic images come in!
Hat tip to cyclotram for the side-by-side picture heads up. Also, thanks to the many commenters who pointed out my brain cloud, calling MRO the ME. It’s fixed now.
October 4th, 2006 at 1:34 am
So is it my imagination or ignorance about crater images or do an awful lot of the craters on Mars look like they were made in mud?
October 4th, 2006 at 2:42 am
Mars Express? Do you happen to mean Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter?
October 4th, 2006 at 2:46 am
It looks more like slate to me (you know, those rocks that were created in long thin sheets 6000 years ago, when radioactive decay happened billions of times faster) with a few craters trown in…
October 4th, 2006 at 2:57 am
Mars Express arrived Mars shortly before the MER rovers in December 2003.
To be fair, Mars Global Surveyor can do better than the image in comparison, especially when using the clever cPROTO technique which allowed it to spot the rovers and their tracks. But even with cPROTO, MRO easily beats MGS in resolution.
Let’s hope MRO beats MGS also in longevity. MGS arrived at Mars shortly after Mars Pathfinder in [i]1997[/i]!
October 4th, 2006 at 4:39 am
I think you meant to write “Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter”, Phil.
It’s very cool to see the higher resolution. I wonder if the MRO might be able to spot the MERs, or the old Viking probes (if they haven’t been buried under too much dust).
Even if it doesn’t, it’s still a fantastic mission, giving the newest closeups of Mars.
October 4th, 2006 at 6:55 am
More pixels for Hoagland & Co to process their Rorschach tests.
I have to admit, though, I was pulling for the ruins to really be there way back when we only had Viking images.
Is cPROTO the deal whgere they take advantage of the fact that the probe is moving so they can sort of get the “in between” pixels? Works only in the direction of travel?
October 4th, 2006 at 6:56 am
>>> craters on Mars look like they were made in mud?
Don’t some folks say that’s evidence of ample subsurface water ice? The meteor hits and melts the ice and you get a wet, runny crater until it freezes again?
October 4th, 2006 at 7:54 am
> So is it my imagination or ignorance about crater images or do an awful lot > of the craters on Mars look like they were made in mud?
I was thinking that it looks like a solder blob from my last electronics project…
October 4th, 2006 at 8:57 am
I think I see a pyramid! There, in the top right hand side!
October 4th, 2006 at 9:35 am
I agree they don’t look much like the craters on the Moon or the few exposed ones we have on Earth like Barringer. My first thought was that maybe the rock on Mars melted during impact but I can’t think of a reason the rock on mars would be more subject to melting than the rock on the Moon or Earth. Plus, the pictures of craters from MER don’t seem to show melting. Maybe there are a couple different types of crater?? I’m confused (no doubt from ignorance) but it’s a fun confusion. The ice melting idea seems to work much better than my rock melting idea though.
October 4th, 2006 at 10:26 am
PaleoProf said:My first thought was that maybe the rock on Mars melted during impact but I can’t think of a reason the rock on mars would be more subject to melting than the rock on the Moon or Earth. Plus, the pictures of craters from MER don’t seem to show melting. Maybe there are a couple different types of crater?? I’m confused (no doubt from ignorance) but it’s a fun confusion. The ice melting idea seems to work much better than my rock melting idea though.
Hey, you must be in another field of science besides planetary geology too!
Totally uniformed guess re the rocks themselves melting -> how would the lighter atmosphere affect the impact melt temperature?
“There are definitely many different crater types. In those Cydonia images there were volcanic and impact craters”, she said with pride at knowing so little about so much.
And it is fun. If I had more time I go look into the mud thing but alas, time follows her own rules. So I await the experts to weigh in.
October 4th, 2006 at 11:10 am
> I think I see a pyramid! There, in the top right hand side!
Hm, I don’t see any pyramids here. But check out the diamond-shaped area just to the right of the big crater. Clearly this must be a sports field of some sort. It’s not quite a baseball diamond, and not quite a football field, so the ancient Martians must have played a bizarre alien hybrid of the two sports.
October 4th, 2006 at 12:42 pm
That’s clearly a Ruckusball rhombus.
October 4th, 2006 at 12:56 pm
Blernsball!
October 4th, 2006 at 1:27 pm
Let me volunteer a couple of points that escaped Phil (well aside from the Mars Express / MRO thing):
1) The comparison image (and accompanying chest beating on the original HiRISE page) are more than just a way to show U.S. taxpayers what they’re getting — they’re also a way to poke a stick in the eye of the folks at Malin Space Science Systems. HiRISE was built by Ball Aerospace, and ever since Malin lost the competition to build the MRO camera, Malin & Ball have been taking pot-shots at each other in various venues. As has been pointed out, if a cProto MOC image was compared against HiRISE, the difference would be far less dramatic.
Here’s the original page for the comparison image, BTW:
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/HiBlog/?p=39
2) The HiRISE site also has a set of images that can be zoomed & panned via Flash in your browser. Go see ‘em here:
http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/HiRISE/hirise_images/
Other odds & ends…
1) Yes, HiRISE should be able (1 m resolution) to see the MER rovers and Viking landers, but only as one or two pixels across each. First priority, though, is to image candidate landing sights for the upcoming Phoenix lander.
2) (to QuietDesperation) cProto is the use of spacecraft slews (on MGS) to improve along-track resolution of the MOC camera — essentially, you slew the camera away from the direction of travel so that the ground “seems” to cross the camera’s field of view more slowly.
Lorne
October 4th, 2006 at 3:31 pm
Grand Lunar’s comment about MRO’s chances of seeing the Viking crafts are right on. Let’s face it, there’s something magical about being able to see our footprint on the rde planet. But I wanted to add that there are a few other crafts (or remains there of) on the surface, that MRO’s HiRise might be able to resolve someday. Focusing in on the failed Beagle 2 Lander from ‘03 would make the Mars Express Orbiter people in the UK very happy. Lack of science return might make these low priority but the Mars Polar Lander, as well as the scattered debris field of the Mars Climate Orbiter would make a niceHiRise target.
if my google search didn’t fail me, there are a couple of Russian craft from the 70s that also made it to the Martian surface. Mars 3 & Mars 6. These are the archeological sites of future Martian colonies. Hey, might as well know where they’re located.
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October 4th, 2006 at 11:17 pm
I didn’t know about the competition between the two cameras. Interesting. Is there evidence for it? Web pages and such?
October 5th, 2006 at 1:12 am
Will there be pictures of the so-called “face” on Mars? I hope so just to show all the conspiracy theorists that they are staring at a MOUNTAIN!!!
October 5th, 2006 at 7:28 am
They are going to tell us something really cool at the MER press conference tomorrow Friday… my crystal ball tells it might be related to MRO.
October 5th, 2006 at 8:38 am
Lorne Ipsum said:
>1) The comparison image (and accompanying chest beating on the original HiRISE page) are more than just a way to show U.S. taxpayers what they’re getting — they’re also a way to poke a stick in the eye of the folks at Malin Space Science Systems. HiRISE was built by Ball Aerospace, and ever since Malin lost the competition to build the MRO camera, Malin & Ball have been taking pot-shots at each other in various venues.
Maybe, maybe not. I don’t see anything in that comparison that is unjustified. I would expect people to ask, “So how much better are the HiRISE images from what we had before?” Maybe a comparison with the cProto is desirable, but the cProto is a limited set of the MOC images, so it is fair to compare baseline images to baseline images.
October 5th, 2006 at 9:21 am
Clearly that’s been doctored to remove evidence of the martian cities. Err…
October 5th, 2006 at 10:10 am
Unfortunately, even with super-high resolution pictures like the ones the MRO will beam back, the conspiracy theory nutcases still won’t be satisfied. Hell, they won’t be satisfied until they themselves are somehow on the surface of Mars, drilling through ancient rock layers to try and uncover “alien bones” or “pyramids” or “hot dog stands”. I don’t even think they’d be satisfied then.
They’ll just cry foul when newer, higher resolution pics of the “face” are shown, just like they always have, and even if every other rational human on the planet says otherwise, they will still believe it is some stupid alien artifact and not just a random hunk of rocks and dirt. Oh well. Cool comparison photos, though!
October 5th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
Hey Skeptigirl I am SOOOO not a planetary geologist but I did I quick “back of the envelope” calculation and it looks like one Earth atmosphere (14.7 psi) is equal to ABOUT 6m of rock. There is a lot of slop in that number but I really don’t think that removing the equivalent of 6m of rock in terms of pressure is going to affect the melting temp of the surface rock that much. I know there is some atmosphere on mars but I think it’s like 7mb as opposed to the Earth’s 1014 so I’m just pretending it’s not there at all for this. Pressure for the onset of most change in rock in measured in Kilobars so I don’t think that one bar (atmosphere) give or take is really going to matter.
The more I think of it the more I like the whole “frozen groundwater flash melted by impact then re-freezing on the night time side of the planet” idea.
Regardless I’m sure someone has already worked this out or knows this and is enjoying watch me flail around so I’ll stop now
But you’re right, it’s a lot of fun… beats working
October 5th, 2006 at 1:50 pm
This is my first viewing of this image and my immediate reaction were those of * skeptigirl
, looks like a big rock dropped onto some thick mud.
October 5th, 2006 at 6:16 pm
I don’t have any issues with the comparison. It’ll be interesting in the future if they get into cProto-ing the HiRise camera, assuming it’s capable and the process isn’t patented (I only wish I were kidding on the last part)
October 6th, 2006 at 9:24 am
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/figures/PIA08816_fig1.jpg
Cool, eh?