• These Are The Cameras Currently Shooting On Mars
    71 replies, posted
[QUOTE]Last night, NASA successfully landed the Curiosity rover on Mars, sending back its first picture to international acclaim. We've seen a couple of other small images beam back, but the question all us gearheads want to know is: what cameras do they have on board? Thankfully, NASA loves to tell us this stuff. The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL, aka the Curiosity) has two mast cameras, as seen here. One has a fixed 34mm f/8 lens that covers a 15° field of view, covering 1200x1200 pixels on a 1600 by 1200 CCD. The other is a fixed 100mm f/10 lens, with a 5.1° field of view on an identical sensor. You can see some pre-launch images taken with them here. These cameras won't start showing they're stuff until later this week. They'll transmit color images as they have Bayer Pattern Filter CCDs, and have adjustable filters to capture different wavelengths of light: [quote]Each Mastcam camera head also has a filter wheel, so that images taken by looking through filters covering different, narrow visible and near-infrared wavelengths can be obtained. Filters for the 34 mm Mastcam are (in nanometers): 440, 525, 550, 675, 750, 865, 1034, and 440(neutral density). Filters for the 100 mm Mastcam are (in nanometers): 440, 525, 550, 800, 905, 935, 1035, and 880(neutral density). The neutral density filters are for viewing the Sun. Each filter wheel also includes a visually clear (actually infrared rejection coated) filter for nominal RGB (red, green, blue) imaging using the Bayer Pattern CCD. [/quote] The cameras can also capture 720p video, full 360° panoramas, and even use both lenses to capture 3D images. This information won't be broadcast home instantly as the files are pretty large for such a long trip — the Rover has 8GB of onboard storage, and will transmit thumbnails back first, so that NASA can request the images it really wants to see. That's an impressive amount of hardware to be controlling across the vast gulfs of space, and the shots that have come back — as simple as they are, have touched an awful lot of people. [img]http://www.popphoto.com/files/imagecache/article_main_photo/_images/201208/mastcat30big_cb.jpeg[/img][/quote] Source: [url]http://www.popphoto.com/gear/2012/08/what-cameras-are-capturing-those-photos-mars[/url]
When I was watching the live stream of the rover landing, and I saw the pictures it sent, I was amazed. I can't wait to see high-res, color pictures now too.
Finally we get to see some martians.
I foresee lots and lots of red sand, and not much else.
My camera is better. It has more megapixels.
[QUOTE=valkery;37115325]I foresee lots and lots of red sand, and not much else.[/QUOTE] What about red rocks? Don't forget the red rocks!
Should have just strapped like 20 GoPros to it.
[QUOTE]These cameras won't start showing [B]they're[/B] stuff until later this week.[/QUOTE] Seriously?
8 gigs of onboard storage? What is this, 2003?
[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;37115338]What about red rocks? Don't forget the red rocks![/QUOTE] I wanna see some red rovers
All of this amazing technology and it only has 8GB to store whatever it captures, lol. (I know having more isn't really necessary because of the thumbnail feature.)
These cameras won't start showing they're stuff until later this week. ....................showing they're stuff............ ...............................they're............ Ninja'd
[QUOTE=Used Car Salesman;37115560]8 gigs of onboard storage? What is this, 2003?[/QUOTE] They're probably using SD cards, or XD cards. Still that's pretty shit considering you can get up to 64 on SD and 120 on XD cards.
I bet we're gonna find iron. Yeah, lots of iron. You wait and see.
[QUOTE=Used Car Salesman;37115560]8 gigs of onboard storage? What is this, 2003?[/QUOTE] It doesn't need more storage than that, the rest gets stored in the Martian cloud.
[QUOTE=Used Car Salesman;37115560]8 gigs of onboard storage? What is this, 2003?[/QUOTE] Probably clears it after it sends it back to Earth. Why keep all the photos ever taken stuck on the device? Odds are we'll never get it back until sometime at the end of the century - and that's being optimistic.
Just as a reference of where the pictures will be taken... [IMG]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a3/Mars_Science_Laboratory_landing_ellipse_reduced.jpg/800px-Mars_Science_Laboratory_landing_ellipse_reduced.jpg[/IMG] Aeolis Mons being a 5.5 km high mountain.
[QUOTE=Used Car Salesman;37115560]8 gigs of onboard storage? What is this, 2003?[/QUOTE] The stuff sent up always lags significantly behind the tech curve. It has to be hardened all to hell to ensure that it virtually never fails and can withstand large amounts of radiation.
[QUOTE=GunFox;37115790]The stuff sent up always lags significantly behind the tech curve. It has to be hardened all to hell to ensure that it virtually never fails and can withstand large amounts of radiation.[/QUOTE] Yeah, this isn't off the shelf technology, it's super expensive radiation hardened gear (It has to withstand bombardment with cosmic radiation which can permanently damage it, something we don't have to deal with much on earth) Just one of the CPUs in the Curiosity costs around $200,000, and performance wise the Raspberry Pi outperforms it by nearly 4x. Of course something like the Raspberry Pi wouldn't last long in space, might not even survive the journey, etc.
[QUOTE=don818;37115649]They're probably using SD cards, or XD cards. Still that's pretty shit considering you can get up to 64 on SD and 120 on XD cards.[/QUOTE] Why would they use SD? They don't have any plans to be physically removing the memory any time soon.
it's just solid state
So's a damn flash drive.
I'd imagine it has to be hardened and designed to work under extreme conditions, It also needs to last a long time, if it fails it can't just be replaced. I'd imagine they have quite a few 8GB device backups incase of failure
If an SD card can't survive underwater, it's not going to survive months of being bombarded with the sun's direct light.
[QUOTE=GunFox;37115790]The stuff sent up always lags significantly behind the tech curve. It has to be hardened all to hell to ensure that it virtually never fails and can withstand large amounts of radiation.[/QUOTE] Not to mention they started building the project 8 years ago. [editline]7th August 2012[/editline] If they had to keep it up to date with the way computing technology is changing they would never get it done.
[QUOTE=Jookia;37116762]If an SD card can't survive underwater, it's not going to survive months of being bombarded with the sun's direct light.[/QUOTE] SD cards can survive under water, one sd card was found in a camera dropped in an ocean for a year and still worked. [url]http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/after-a-year-in-the-pacific-ocean-a-canon-eos-camera-photographs-are-reunited-with-its-owners-28-11-2011/[/url]
[QUOTE=don818;37115649]They're probably using SD cards, or XD cards. Still that's pretty shit considering you can get up to 64 on SD and 120 on XD cards.[/QUOTE] Its the NASA budget, I wouldn't be surprised if this whole mission was done on 1950's computers or early Chinese rockets.
[QUOTE=valkery;37115325]I foresee lots and lots of red sand, and not much else.[/QUOTE] Isn't Mars mostly brown and the photos are edited to give it a red tinge? Or am I going mad?
Wonder what their upload bandwidth is in favourable conditions. Not really worth shooting 720p video if it'll take a year to upload.
I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be plugging in consumer removable storage. It probably has a custom memory module built in.
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