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More Data From Mars Rover Spirit's First Month Now Online

Millions of people have viewed pictures from NASA's Spirit on the Mars rovers home page and other Internet sites. Beginning today, a more complete set of science data from Spirit's first 30 martian days is posted on a site primarily for scientists and technical researchers, but also available to anyone who's interested.

The first installment of images, spectroscopic measurements, daily reports, and other information from NASA's Mars Exploration Rover project has been posted on NASA's Planetary Data System. It is available with a new "Analyst's Notebook" user interface at: http://pds-geosciences.wustl.edu/meran . Home page for the Planetary Data System is http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov . Images are also available from the system's Planetary Image Atlas, at http://pdsimg.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/MER/sea...PLORATION_ROVER . Data from Opportunity's first 30 martian days, or "sols," will be added Aug. 24, and data from later portions of both rovers' missions will be added in October.

"All the raw images and selected processed images and other information have been shared with the public since the rovers first reached Mars in January. This release adds other derived images and maps used for planning, all the non-image data from the spectrometers, daily operational reports and activity plans," said Dr. Ray Arvidson of Washington University, St. Louis, deputy principal investigator for the twin rovers' science payload.

"The 'Analyst's Notebook' is designed to help you navigate through the data and understand the synergies," he said. "You can't deal with the Moessbauer spectrometer readings from a given sol without information about other observations that go with it."

"We are proud to be releasing such a comprehensive set of data from the surface science mission of the twin rovers so quickly," said Dr. Jim Garvin, NASA's chief scientist for Mars. "It's a testament to the dedication and commitment of the science and engineering teams that this remarkable collection of information is now available to the entire world for interpretation, education, and to help guide NASA's new exploration focus," added Garvin.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover project for NASA. Images and additional information about the project are available from JPL at http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov and from Cornell University, at http://athena.cornell.edu . The Planetary Photojournal, at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov , is another resource for easy public access to images of Mars and other worlds.

[djellison]

Right - done some side by side comparisons of different image sources and formats. Sorry about the slightly morbid subject matter - but it's probably the best target to see dynamic range being best demonstrated. There's no doubt in my mind which offers the most realistic format. (the top one -downloaded IMG's converted with NASA View) What I need now is a batch img processor to shove them into a 12 bit format I can use in photoshop. Remember of course - I look at all this with an Artistic Eye, not a scientific eye. I want to do the best job I can of making things appear as they would if you were there. You'd never see a white surface on mars - the tint of the sky colour would render them all salmon-pink / brown / reddish / call it what you will. It's for that reason that I prefer the first image. I just hope that sequential sets of images taken 'down' from horizon to surface dont change in brightness as have done before. Netants is working overtime downloading a LOT of IMG's as we speak