Mars Rover: How a Self-Portrait Captured the Power of Curiosity

Mars Rover: How a Self-Portrait Captured the Power of Curiosity — page 3
500,000 lines of computer code so it could operate on its own and steer itself to the rocky surface of the planet Now the team only needed to send the simple command Do_EDL and wait Because of the delay the spacecraft had already completed its descent when the JPL team got the signal saying the descent had started CURIOSITY’S EYES Spacecraft photographs have told Mars story to Earthlings since 1965 The Mariner spacecraft were originally designed without cameras but mission scientists thought they would be beneficial and they were added Today onboard cameras are prized Seventeen cameras are aboard Curiosity NASA selected Michael Malin to design Curiosity’s main cameras The former professor and JPL scientist has worked on spacecraft cameras since 1986 His cameras had taken literally millions of pictures from spacecraft launched to the Red Planet said geochemist Roger Wiens He seemed to know every square foot of Mars like his own backyard 7 As soon as Curiosity’s heat shield fell away one of Malin’s cameras started clicking The Mars Descent Imager snapped nearly 300 photographs making the first movie of a Mars landing The Mastcam designed by Malin is two cameras mounted 7 feet 2 m above the surface on a rotatable mast They take crisp colorful photographs that can be woven into dramatic 360-degree views Each camera sees differently one can focus narrowly while the other sees a wider perspective Mission engineer Adam Steltzner said that when images from both eyes are combined humans can relate to the distances just like as if they were there 8 With the help of the images scientists can guide the rover toward interesting rocks to investigate Curiosity has a 7-foot 2-m robotic arm that holds another Malin-designed camera called the Mars Hand Lens Imager MAHLI It does the same job as the magnifying lens that geologists on Earth wear around their necks MAHLI can photograph objects smaller than a human hair Close-up photographs showing the colors and structure of rocks can help scientists learn how they formed Michael Malin is the subject of a test photo at JPL by a Mastcam of his design