In a word, yes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MRO_HiRISE.jpg

http://www.msss.com/lro/lroc/illustrations/LROC_NA_WA_figure_i.jpg

But to reiterate, the goal is not to provide the best imagery possible, but imagery that satisfies the mission requirements. This answers Ray’s question–

“While I understand Phil’s comment about having 25cm imagery of Mars, I have to ask “What would we use it for?”
And are there really any features on Mars that we need to see at that level of resolution?

–in that the science objectives of HiRISE are to characterize the current climate and mechanisms of climate change, determine the nature of complex layered terrain, identify water-related landforms, search for sites showing evidence for aqueous and/or hydrothermal activity, an identify and characterize sites with the highest potential for landed science and sample return by future missions. Those high level science requirements drive the imagery resolution.

2) The fractal self-similarity just screams out at you doesn’t it? I posted a long rambling blog that was partially based around this quote from Thoreau:

When the frost comes out in the spring, and even in a thawing day in the winter, the sand begins to flow down the slopes like lava, sometimes bursting out through the snow and overflowing it where no sand was to be seen before. Innumerable little streams overlap and interlace one with another, exhibiting a sort of hybrid product, which obeys half way the law of currents, and half way that of vegetation. As it flows it takes the forms of sappy leaves or vines, making heaps of pulpy sprays a foot or more in depth, and resembling, as you look down on them, the laciniated, lobed, and imbricated thalluses of some lichens; or you are reminded of coral, of leopard’s paws or birds’ feet, of brains or lungs or bowels, and excrements of all kinds. It is a truly grotesque vegetation…You find thus in the very sands an anticipation of the vegetable leaf. No wonder that the earth expresses itself outwardly in leaves, it so labors with the idea inwardly. The atoms have already learned this law, and are pregnant by it

Hey Mars probably thinks Earth’s weird y’know!

It’s small, and cold, and has a thin atmosphere that’s almost entirely carbon dioxide, and what isn’t CO2 is nitrogen and, bizarrely, argon.

Well Argon is inert and heavy, very non-reactive and, okay its a bit rareish, but bizarre? Why?

BTW. Why argon though and not xenon or krypton nobelly-gas-speaking? Or is that the bizarre part?

Sure that ain’t your colon? (Checks to see if I’ve been in a nearly year-long coma w /o realising & its suddenly April 1st.)

(Since I am new to this blog, I should say that the above sentence is tongue-in-cheek.)

The table below the image on the HiRISE site states: that the angle of solar incidence is 77 °, with the Sun about 13 ° above the horizon. Now if only their was an indication of which direction on the image is 77 degrees, then we could clear this all up.

But once again, I never meant to say we needed this exact kind of satellite or this exact resolution in the first place (though my post does sound that way). What I want is a new, higher resolution version of Landsat. A working satellite with multi-spectral imaging that is funded by U.S. tax dollars and makes its data freely available. In a perfect world we would have a hyper-spectral imager on board too. The resolution need not be 25 centimeter, but better than 30 meters would be nice.

They are most definitely round holes. The giveaway is the fact that you can see the edge of the shadows cast by the rim of the holes perfectly paralleling the rim’s shape in the holes’ bottoms. The light source (the Sun) is at the lower right in the first (zoomed in) image, and at the left in the context image.

But my brain is still having a hard time grepping the geometry of the regions opposite the shadowed edges, where the brownish “rind” appears.

And are there really any features on Mars that we need to see at that level of resolution?

For that matter, the same can be asked of Earth.

If you can get an overflight, an aircraft can get you your 1cm. Here’s the classic watering hole shot in Chad. You’ve now seen it Gus. 1cm tricolor. Think his mommy would recognize him?

But with resolution that good, we should be seeing Plant Men. What’s the deal?