Scientists Pick New Mars Landing Site Based on Pictures

An article on Space.com talked about scientists getting new color images and a color movie of the Martian landscape. The movie was created by combining images taken through color filters. The images were taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE). HiRISE is on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and has been helping scientists to decide the best place for a future Martian explorer should land on 2010. The HiRISE camera has 10 red filter detectors, two blue-green and 10 for infrared wavelengths. The HiRISE team developed software that automatically pieced the pictures together to make a color image. HiRISE operations manager, Eric Eliason of the University of Arizona describes how difficult of a task this is: "The technical hurdle has been that the sets of different color detectors are staggered within the camera focal plane array, and the spacecraft isn't perfectly steady as it operates in space." What came from all this work is 143 full-color images and a 41 second movie clip showing Mars' Nili Fossae region. Eliason also commented: "Color data are proving very useful in interpreting geologic processes and history on Mars. The images we're releasing today include views of some of the most exciting and compositionally diverse areas on the planet. They are really interesting." One of the color images can be seen below.