
Mars 360-degree panoramic view from Curiosity - rdamico
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443991704577579652958963584.html?mod=e2tw
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cypherpunks01
Curiosity should totally become the first extraterrestrial Street View car on
mars.google.com!

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mhansen
Have a look in Google Earth. It has street view from generations of rovers ;)

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EternalFury
Can someone explain how/why a $2.6 billion piece of equipment appears to have
cameras that can't match a $100 digital camera? I know it takes a long time
for data to travel from there to here, but I am sure a lot of people wouldn't
mind waiting for 1080p, full-color video footage of the red planet. Instead,
we get these 1-megapixel, black-and-white shots that need to be stitched
together to create a half decent panorama image. Sorry, there is probably a
good technical reason for this, but I am just ignorant of it and I would
appreciate an explanation.

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bertako
It's so plebian to complain about the image quality, especially when we
haven't seen any full images from the rover's main camera yet.

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EternalFury
It may even be "plebeian" to ask questions about the technical features of a
data collection instrument named "Curiosity". I should have been an aristocrat
instead of an engineer ; I could marvel at everything wrapped in the bliss of
my ignorance.

And for the record, I think it is amazing and wonderful to receive these
images. I am so thankful for that. But, for a data collection instrument that
cost $2.6 billion to build, I cannot conceal my very personal feeling that an
opportunity was missed.

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monkeytaco
The $2.6 billion price tag is not just for the rover, it includes R&D for the
rover itself, employee salaries, Sky Crane & parachute R&D as well as the
rocket to launch it, which cost over $100 million.

Also included in the budget is funding needed for all of the science teams to
do what they do over the next few years while the rover does experiments.

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eta_carinae
I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that this piece of metal
traveled 350 million miles through space and then landed on Mars.

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10098
Me too. I mean, look at this. The place looks like a desert on Earth, and yet
its millions of miles away in space, on another planet. There's a certain
feeling I experience when I look at those photos, like there is a vast, cold
void inside of my chest. I felt something similar when I touched a meteorite
for the first time. That rock came here from god knows where, probably it was
floating around in space for many many years, and now here I am holding it.

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kibwen
_That rock came here from god knows where, probably it was floating around in
space for many many years_

Don't sell yourself short, you yourself were floating around in space for
about ten billion years. Or at least, your constituent atoms were. :)

"We, who embody the local eyes and ears and thoughts & feelings of the cosmos,
we’ve begun - at last - to wonder about our origins. Star stuff, contemplating
the stars, organized collections of ten billion, billion, billion atoms,
contemplating the evolution of matter, tracing that long path by which it
arrived at consciousness here on the planet Earth and perhaps - throughout the
cosmos." ~ Carl Sagan

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ChuckMcM
Well it doesn't look like path planning is going to be an issue for the first
couple of Km :-)

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tdicola
Very cool! Does anyone else think the interactivity adds nothing and just
makes looking at a big image more difficult?

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kyberias
Yes, I agree.

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10098
Why is it all black-and-white? Is it because color cameras are too
heavy/expensive to take or because color photography is for some reason
impossible under those conditions?

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miahi
All camera sensors are actually black and white. To obtain color information,
the sensors have a color filter. This filter is optional/interchangeable in
this camera. To obtain a color photo, you take three shots with three
different filters (R,G,B). This way you can also get UV, IR pictures - and
more.

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wlievens
To clarify that a bit more: consumer camera's use a Bayer filter, which is an
alternating R/G/G/B filter over your pixel array. So, with a consumer camera
you take just one picture, and then software assembles that into a color
picture.

For space missions you would definitely prefer a camera with interchangeable
filters, because then you can also have filters for other spectrum ranges.

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jorgem
I am surprised by how many good sized pebbles are on the top surfaces of
curiosity. I guess I expect dust, but those are pretty big. Kicked up during
the landing?

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Cogito
I had assumed that they were blown there by the wind. I'm sure it's just as
likely they settled after being kicked up during the landing.

[EDIT] From the nasa website [1]:

 _Today's Sol 3 morning and afternoon passes by NASA's Mars Odyssey and Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft provided a plethora of new data, including
more high-resolution black-and-white 360-degree and deck panorama images from
her Navigation Camera, or Navcam,_ which revealed some small pebbles deposited
on the deck during landing, _which should pose no problems for mission
operations. Curiosity also returned 130 low-resolution thumbnail images from
the color Mast Camera, or Mastcam, providing scientists and engineers with
their first color panorama glimpse of Gale Crater._

[1]
[http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAct...](http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=1301)

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adrianwaj
Descent of the Phoenix <http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080530.html>

Curiosity Drops In
[http://www.uahirise.org/images/2012/details/cut/ESP_028256_9...](http://www.uahirise.org/images/2012/details/cut/ESP_028256_9022-1.jpg)

from: <http://www.uahirise.org/releases/msl-descent.php>

A Wheel on Mars <http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120807.html>

landing site:
[http://www.uahirise.org/images/2012/details/cut/landing_site...](http://www.uahirise.org/images/2012/details/cut/landing_site_annotated.jpg)

Curiosity Before Mars: Seven Minutes of Terror (video 5:08)
<http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120731.html>

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codehotter
Here are some more pictures (including color)
<http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/targetFamily/Mars>

I wonder what the sky of mars looks like. Can we see earth?

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wlievens
> Can we see earth?

At night, as a pretty bright star, I'd guess. That would be an awesome
picture, especially if they expose it long enough.

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yason
There it is then, going around and taking pictures. A bit lonely out there
though, I must say.

Space programs are always, by nature, unbelievable stunts. There are so many
things that can go wrong and then they don't, and you end up landing a tonne
of sensitive equipment safely on another planet and there it is then, sending
vacation pictures to Earth.

If they can do that, what could we do or what could I do that I don't?

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telepoiss
Also I think choice of the low-res camera is related to it being better
shielded against the space radiation
[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1350448710...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135044871000380X)

Its still somehow unbelievable that I'm actually seeing photos from another
planet almost realtime.

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m_for_monkey
Intellectually stimulating, but after the first few pictures... well, there's
nothing to see there, just sand and rocks. The most visually interesting thing
on this panorama image is the rover itself, so I don't mind the relatively low
quality. Now I'm waiting for some non-visual data. Curiosity has a lot of
sensors besides the cameras.

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spacemouse
The Cosmos magazines Mars issue on the iPad has a Mars panorama which utilizes
gyroscope.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy3r8k8hX-8>

Sadly its not the panorama Curiosity took but the one from the previous Mars
rover.

Sill its pretty awesome.

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brg1007
Can someone explain what represents the marking on Curiosity next to NASA logo
(middle part, white circle). It is present all over the robot.

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viesturs
I think it indicates moving parts.

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davedda
Any thoughts on why the top area has been blacked out from view? Protecting
devices? limitations of the equipment?

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jmagar
I suspect they haven't taken those photos yet.

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antimatter
Anyone know what the circular symbols (similar to the BMW logo) all over the
rover mean?

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lmm
They look like calibration targets to me.

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joshlegs
Why is it all just barren desert? :D

Too bad it's not enough for a complete 360 panoramic :(

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danielwozniak
Full screen is tight. After a few minutes of looking around at the landscape,
I find my self more interested in cool 360 view _of_ curiosity not _from_.

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pradeep89
amazing...

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vlad
A quick take on the project.

Software Architect: "Hello sir! As you know, it has taken millions to billions
of dollars and years of time to develop your project. We are ready to launch!
As you know, it will take a year to actually deploy it in production, during
which point a bug or misconfiguration of the software during the transfer,
installation, or activation stages would cause it to fail. If a failure
happens, we will need millions of dollars and lots of time to rebuild the
project, as well as to figure out what went wrong and to try again. However,
if we do succeed in installing the project as we hope, we expect will be able
to run for ten years without updates. If you do need an update or if an error
is encountered or the hardware deteriorates (such as because of a memory
error, hard-drive crash, etc.), then parts of the application never work
again. Also, as a reminder, the user will have to wait many hours after
submitting input before receiving acknowledgement from the system, and many
days to receive even partial results."

Customer: "Thank you for your report. It sounds great. I have one suggestion.
Lets make sure that when ask the system for an image, we use the .BMP format
to increase the file size. This way, we can please the media with numbers
about how much raw data we have obtained."

Software Architect: "This will take additional time and millions of dollars
and not be much of a benefit."

Customer: "Ok, fine let's skip that."

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Sharlin
What's the relevance of this? Since they're bandwith limited, using a more
inefficient compression scheme wouldn't gain them any extra transmitted bytes,
only less actual data.

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vlad
My point was that delaying an expensive and years-long software project that's
already prone to failure, just to replace a perfectly adequate feature with
another whose only benefit is to impress the media, would probably be
considered stupid. In my example, it would be to receive images as BMP files
just to be able to brag to the media how much data was received. (Maybe I
shouldn't have used images in my example software project since it confused
people, but I blame Hacker News for going offline before I could make
improvements.)

