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- TheMachine1, on 06/01/2008, -24/+249How about a full color high resolution picture.
- Garlik, on 06/01/2008, -22/+210Why isn't the lander equipped with Rick Astley?
- listrophy, on 06/01/2008, -4/+175Now that NASA's caught the public eye, can we please start funding them like a real space program ought to be funded?
- Smooooth, on 06/01/2008, -10/+172Why isn't the lander equipped with a teleportation device?
- listrophy, on 06/01/2008, -2/+132From my understanding, the camera has the capability to produce a high resolution color picture, but that's a bit down the line. The datastream capacity from Mars to Earth is probably not that great, and the NASA folks are getting their bearings and scoping their environment with low res B&W pics. In other words, wait just a little longer.
- superkendall, on 06/01/2008, -2/+81It is (kind of), in fact it has twelve filters for different spectrums.
You take color pictures by taking images with the red/green/blue filters in place, then combining the images.
They take B&W images first because it's faster, and they want to make sure when they go to the trouble of the multiple exposures needed to get color, that it's worth the bother. - Professr, on 06/01/2008, -3/+79We want to FIND life, not kill it!
- lead2thehead, on 06/01/2008, -1/+72If they had the same funding as the military, we'd have warp drive by now.
- oepapel, on 06/01/2008, -1/+63What most people don't realize is that getting color data is always a tradeoff. All scientific grade sensors are Monochromatic. There are 3 ways that scientific color images are created and they all have drawbacks.
1) Use a Mosaic filter on top of a monochromatic sensor. This is the cheapest way but you only get 1/4 of the resolution of the sensor since each 2x2 area on the sensor is used to create a single pixel. A process called Bayer Pattern removal creates the final color image and the camera "color corrects" by assigning a weighting factor to the subcomponents based on the expected light source.
2) Use 3 sensors and an optic block. This method keeps the resolution high but the optic block acts as a neutral density filter reducing the effective sensitivity of the sensor. Also costs the most (although cost is a secondary issue) and weighs the most (which is a big concern).
3) Use one sensor and a filter wheel and take 3 exposures, one each for Red Green and Blue. This trades time for resolution. You still have the sensitivity issue and you get a new issue: registration and motion error. Wind. vibration and motion make this a nonstarter. If the filter wheel has an "open" position, this camera can also take monochrome sensor images directly. This type of camera is useful only in lab conditions where you can guarantee (or at least control) motion or vibration.
The final point is that color is just not really useful in a scientific sense. All color sensors are "false color" in that they use a filter in front of a monochromatic sensor in some way and then, based on what they expect "white" to look like, they mess with the data until it looks good. This is called color correction or white balance correction and it changes the data. Scientists are just more comfortable with raw data and they can digitally apply false color later. - EmileVictor, on 06/01/2008, -0/+50LEAVE PHOENIX ALOOOONE!!!!!!
:'( - Intangible360, on 06/01/2008, -2/+46From the Mars Phoenix Twitter: "B & W low-res engineering images were first priority but full color is coming soon. Camera has 12 filters incl visual and infrared. "
- magnetarc, on 06/01/2008, -1/+43ping..........................................................................................................................
- yournightmare, on 06/01/2008, -2/+42How about holding your damn horses? It just landed the other day, give it some time to relax and get used to its new surroundings. It hasn't even had time to unpack yet, will you just chill out for a while? I bet you're the guy that flies 14 hours to London and as soon as you and your friends walk into your hotel room you're trying to get them down to Picadilly Circus to party.
- total1337ness, on 06/01/2008, -2/+41That there is water and possibly life.
- roystgnr, on 06/02/2008, -0/+37Although an Astley module might help the lander never give up, it might interfere with the primary function of a spacecraft lander: to let you down.
- mrloco, on 06/01/2008, -9/+45i think the colour pictures are false colour anyway.
- SubjectiveC, on 06/01/2008, -1/+35Here's hoping they find a real alien life form instead of a douchey puppet looking in through a window. Some kind of bacteria within the ice. That would be great.
- superkendall, on 06/01/2008, -3/+37(a) if that were the only ice around, they would be incredibly UNLUCKY - for that is the one spot the arm cannot reach...
(b) They chose the plain they landed on because the entire area, for miles on end, is supposed to be ice beneath a few inches of soil - just like under the lander. So again, "luck" had nothing to do with this - they chose the landing area for a reason and if that's ice, there's ice everywhere just as the satellite research predicted.
In NASA there is very little luck, mostly tons of hard work that yields payoffs as a result. Now the rovers going for so long, and being happily dusted by Mars itself - THAT is luck (though even there the sturdy design of the rovers is why they keep going). - sanman, on 06/01/2008, -4/+37Now that it looks like there's gobs of water on Mars, we need to figure out how to colonize it. We need to seed Mars with bacterial monocultures of engineered microbes that will aggressively spread out and absorb carbon from the CO2 atmosphere, to sequester it as vegetation/biological matter. We can also grab large chunks of ammonia nearby from Saturn's and Jupiter's rings, and from the asteroid belt, to rain them down on Mars.
Then we can build transparent aerogel domes on Mars, as self-contained biospheres for terrestrial life and human colonists.
Following this Phoenix mission, there need to be aerial balloon missions that can do finely detailed resource and mineral mapping of the Martian surface. - inactive, on 06/01/2008, -2/+30Photo Mirror
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f188/evenwinsher ...
And Text:
Take a look at this image sent back from the Phoenix lander. On Friday, Phoenix scientist Ray Arvidson said there may be ice directly under the Phoenix lander, exposed in the blast zone by the retrorockets used for Phoenix's soft landing. Friday's image showed a small portion of the exposed area that looks brighter and smoother than the surrounding soil. On Saturday, Sol 5 for Phoenix on Mars, a new image shows a greater portion of the area under the lander. Scientists say the abundance of excavated smooth and level surfaces adds evidence to a hypothesis that the underlying material is an ice table covered by a thin blanket of soil. This is just what the Phoenix mission was hoping to find, and how incredible to land directly over your goal.
The bright-looking surface material in the center, where the image is partly overexposed, may not be inherently brighter than the foreground material in shadow. But the scientists are calling this area "Holy Cow." Reportedly (via Emily at the Planetary Society) that's exactly the phrase exclaimed when this image was returned. More pictures of this feature will be imaged using different exposures in an effort to determine if this really is ice.
The other interesting aspect of this image is that the retrorocket nozzles are visible right at the top of the image.
We'll keep you posted when there's more information and data available on the area under the lander.
Sources: Phoenix, Planetary Blog
Written by Nancy Atkinson - Theoxenmooving, on 06/01/2008, -1/+27That pic is from one of the secondary cameras that are placed all around Phoenix. They're like the 'nav cams' on spirit and Oppurtunity, and only take pics in black and white. The color camera is on a mast above the deck of the lander.
- iamthejeff, on 06/01/2008, -2/+28The first shots sent back are black and white because it requires less time to send and NASA is able to tell if the lander made a successful landing or not much quicker.
- inactive, on 06/01/2008, -0/+26The real issue is just that there's a limited timeframe in which to transmit data - it has to be relayed to the orbiter, which greatly limits the amount of time it can transmit. You can transmit a lot more data in that window if you use low-res B&W photos. But yeah, that's basically right - once the team has their bearings and all systems are thoroughly checked out, we should start seeing color pics, because there will be less immediate needs for large packets of data.
- mcottier, on 06/02/2008, -0/+25I watched the landing live, and they said out loud that they were receiving data at 8 kbps, so there you go :)
- Palscience1, on 06/01/2008, -2/+27Great Pictures, When the first time I looked at the images a week ago, I thought they were rocks. But now it seems its ice. Good Job Nasa
- Zebceponaf, on 06/01/2008, -0/+24"We can also grab large chunks of ammonia nearby from Saturn's and Jupiter's rings"
right, cause that's just a stone throw away. - Echomote, on 06/01/2008, -0/+23not the best place to host a server
- mrburgundy, on 06/01/2008, -0/+23it also needs a chipotle.
- jasmus, on 06/02/2008, -0/+21And HDR. Plus a Myspace filter, where every shot is huge wide-angled, or in a mirror with someone pouting.
- inactive, on 06/01/2008, -0/+21Hehe, I suddenly had an amusing thought - a bunch of astronomers down at Arecibo getting drunk and deciding "Hey, let's Rick Roll those ***** in Andromeda!" I wonder if the aliens would catch on if the priming code ended with uuiU?
- OC73, on 06/01/2008, -4/+24Ice, ice, baby!
- borez, on 06/01/2008, -1/+21Have a bath
- ndnspongebob, on 06/02/2008, -3/+22but does it have to be false color? Nasa is full of engineers and we cant even get a color camera on the Phoenix Mars Lander?
- notzak, on 06/01/2008, -0/+19That unfortunately means that the terrorists have already won.
- MasterGrief, on 06/01/2008, -0/+19It seems more likely that a Starbucks would be there.
- Laminarcissus, on 06/01/2008, -0/+19Okay smartass, from the Mars Lander TwitterStream:
"B & W low-res engineering images were first priority but full color is coming soon. Camera has 12 filters incl visual and infrared." - Keffmaster, on 06/01/2008, -1/+19Cause Rick would never give up but the rover's life is only so long
- loggedout, on 06/01/2008, -10/+27If there is water, maybe there will be a Dunkin Donuts.
- danomagnum, on 06/02/2008, -1/+181987 called, it wants its modem back.
- fooljoe, on 06/01/2008, -6/+22ya so there's water there, we've been 99% sure of that for a while anyway, so what are we going to do about it?
- thealec, on 06/01/2008, -1/+16Then we'll send in the coal and oil companies to see if they like it. If not, we'll carbonize the useless *****.
- EmileVictor, on 06/01/2008, -2/+1715, actually.
It'd be interesting to have a figure on bps sent... - sanman, on 06/01/2008, -0/+15Red Mars -> Green Mars -> Blue Mars
Here's the famous trilogy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy
Hmm, starts with... globalization... transnational corporations...
Is that so far from today's reality? - Oea420, on 06/01/2008, -1/+15Why are you digging the comment above me down guys?
He's telling the truth.
The only planet we've ever been able to see for sure if it does have life... is our own.... This planet is host to life in the most inhospitable enviornments we know. It would be arrogant to think that this planet is somehow special in the grand scheme of things. From research here, it shows life is resilient and quite abundant wherever you look, why wouldn't this model play out across the universe?
"A Many Number of Things" do not have to go right for life to thrive, let alone exist! - inactive, on 06/01/2008, -0/+14Like the color camera they are working on it. Right after they get the icee machine up and running that is.
- inactive, on 06/01/2008, -0/+14Teleporter going up!
- inactive, on 06/01/2008, -0/+13Then we can launch Operation Martian Freedom. Man, we're gonna liberate the ***** out of those Martians.
- BlackCow, on 06/01/2008, -0/+13Can mars really be any more ***** then it is now?
- snowpatrol, on 06/02/2008, -0/+12Sir, we blew all our budget on the lander...we can only afford dial-up.
- inactive, on 06/02/2008, -0/+12This must be the reason why I always get lag on xbox live.
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