Red planet- caught on camera

NASA said Friday that they have started receiving high resolution images from the space craft sent to the red planet. The images show every detail of Mars and the scientists have labeled it as “unexpected”.

"If you were there, we could see you," said Alfred McEwen, principal investigator on the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, about the resolution, or level of detail, of the digital pictures taken by the camera, developed at the UA.

The scientists say that it’s too early to jump onto conclusions about the geological processes which have a hand in the formation of sharp features on the planet.

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera aboard the space craft was developed under the direction of the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory by Ball Aerospace.

The $40 million dollar gadget comprises a 0.5 meter mulling telescope, the biggest of any deep space mission, which will allow it to take pictures with resolutions up to 0.3 m resolving objects about a meter across, or the size of a beachball.

It was in 1980 that Alfred McEwen designed a High resolution camera and named it as High Resolution Imager (HRI). The proposal was initially turned down by NASA, but the reproposed HiRISE was formally accepted by NASA in 2001.

Designed to click detailed and well defined surface images of Mars, the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter probe was launched towards the planet on August 12, 2005, to conduct a two-year science survey.

The mission’s intention is to map the Martian topography and find apt landing sites for the forthcoming lander missions. It arrived in orbit on March 10, 2006. The next scheduled mission to Mars is the NASA Phoenix Mars lander, expected to launch in 2007.

The gadget had two opportunities to take pictures of Mars (the first was on March 24, 2006) before MRO entered aerobraking, during which time the camera was turned off for six months.

It was on September 27 that the instrument was switched on successfully and took its first high-resolution pictures of Mars on September 29.

The excellent imaging by the camera will permit the study of the age of Martian features, looking for landing sites for future Mars landers, and in general, see the Martian surface in far greater detain than has previously been done from orbit.

By doing so, it will allow better studies of Martian channels and valleys, volcanic landforms, possible former lakes and oceans, and other surface landforms as they exist on the Martian surface.

McEwen said last week that till recently, landers faced problems of unsafe touchdowns, as the orbiting cameras did not have the resolution to capture the minutest objects.

He said that the first image taken from a distance of 200 miles of Iris, was 2000 pixels wide, with each pixel representing about a foot of Mars.

Ius Chasma is the southwestern part of the Valles Marineris, the great canyon system which stretches 4000 kilometers across Mars.

McEwen said that the area was chosen because of its geologic attention which happened to be in the camera's path on its earliest orbit.

The images revealed dunes and areas formed by excess water flow. A 75 feet diameter crater and a cliff bisected by a fault line were also seen.

The first picture released in public is black and white, which will be processed gradually to reveal colour.

The general public will be allowed to request sites to take pictures of Mars with the HiRISE camera. For this reason, and due to the unprecedented access of pictures to the public, shortly after they have been received and processed, the camera has taken the philosophy ‘The People's Camera’.