Thursday April 06, 2006
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter sends first snaps home
"The most powerful camera ever sent into space has relayed its first batch of detailed test images of the Red Planet." - reports New Scientist.
"NASA released the first picture, a mosaic of 10 images, taken from an altitude of 2500 kilometres above the southern hemisphere's mid-latitude highlands. It features an old, eroded crater near the centre, with channels on both sides as well as smaller, sharp-rimmed craters and dunes. In places, the landscape is covered in a younger layer of debris, while in others it appears that some of the mantle may have escaped as gas."
NASA says the image "illustrates processes that may have involved water both on ancient Mars (channels and eroded craters) and much more recently in Mars's history (the younger mantle of debris)."
The space agency also released a full-resolution image of one of the tiles (images) from the mosaic, showing the level of detail captured by the camera. That resolution will improve as the spacecraft gets closer to the Martian surface.
Nasa press release
"These images provide the first opportunity to test camera settings and the spacecraft's ability to point the camera with Mars filling the instruments' field of view," said Steve Saunders, the mission's program scientist at NASA Headquarters. "The information learned will be used to prepare for the primary mission next fall."
Posted in: Science by bubblejam at 04:46 AM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry