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New Horizons Pluto encounter raw image data
elakdawalla
post Jan 20 2015, 03:36 AM
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Today and tomorrow I'm attending the New Horizons science team meeting at APL. Ted Stryk is also present and representing unmannedspaceflight.com. This afternoon we got an update on the plans for raw image data release. The responsible person is Joe Peterson at SwRI Boulder. Some of the highlights of his presentation of interest to this forum:

- The team is committed to delivering raw LORRI image data to the public.
- The team has a stated goal of delivering this data to the Web within 24 hours of receipt from the spacecraft
- The mission will probably start delivering raw image data in an automated fashion in early April (100 days before the flyby), but that date could change.
- When data comes down to the ground, there are two different processing pipelines. One, run frequently, just turns the bitstreams into Level 2 image data, with no further processing. The other, run only once a day, knows more about navigational data, and includes calibration, in particular deconvolution, producing Level 3 image data.
- The raw image pipeline is going to be run from the same process that produces Level 2 data. This is awesome because it means we're likely to get data super fast, much faster than the within-24-hours goal. However, it won't be calibrated etc.
- There is a noticeable blur to Level 2 LORRI images. It responds well to deconvolution. Amateurs may want to practice their image-sharpening skills on data from the Jupiter flyby.
- There will be a linear contrast stretch applied to the data.
- The data will be released in JPEG format.
- The team values the contributions of amateurs to public communication about the ongoing mission.
- PDS releases are scheduled for February 2016 (level 2 - uncalibrated), October 2016 (level 3 - calibrated), and March 2017 (level 5 - map products, etc). Keep in mind that while all the images will be returned by November 2015, everything except op navs will be coming down lossy-compressed; it'll be about another year after that that the entire losslessly compressed data set will be on the ground.

In the past, I've expressed concern to Alan about the automated contrast stretch during approach -- that when Pluto occupies a relatively small number of pixels, that the automated stretch could blow out all the pixels on Pluto, leaving it saturated. He's heard this concern and understands it. Saturation could very well turn out to be a problem with the first image releases but I expect the team to be responsive to dealing with that and adjusting the settings on the automated contrast stretch if it is a problem.

I asked today about metadata and Alan said that what metadata is available, how, is TBD. I'll continue to work with the mission on this to advocate for the amateur community's desires. We will have some metadata for sure -- date and time and SPICE kernels at a minimum -- I just don't know how it's going to be viewable yet. There is such a long runup with Pluto being just a few pixels across, there will be a little time to adjust things before the images get really thrilling. (Of course, it's already plenty cool to be able to see Pluto and Charon orbiting the system barycenter, and we could see that last summer).

That's it for now. I don't know of a space mission -- except maybe Juno -- that's more conscious of the role that amateurs can play in producing cool pictures for public consumption. This is going to be a fun ride smile.gif


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