[X] My Assistant

[djellison]

I've emailed David Southwood. I'm not happy with the second-hand info I've heard about the HSRC re it's SRC on MEX ( wow - acronym heaven)

This is what I wrote...

First of all – congratulations to all on the success of Huygens – some spectacular imagery and data to follow – something for all of Europe to be proud of. Who would have thought 20 years ago – that the first instrument to touch titan would come from Milton Keynes!



However – I email you to ask as to there status and whereabouts of High Resolution imagery from the HSRC on Mars Express. Almost a year of orbital operations – and yet not a single released image at the ~2m resolution capability of the HSRC – and not just that – but no explanation as to why there is no imagery! The rest of the cameras abilities have been published in some astonishing imagery that really does show Mars in a whole new way – it’s fantastic. But someone, I cant help feeling that us tax-paying Europeans are missing out on some information here – and doubly frustrating, missing out on WHY we’re missing out.



Whilst, obviously, NASA and JPL are much more experienced with such things – MOC aboard MGS has released of all imagery in 6 month batches, at 6 month intervals – and I cant help feel that Mars Express should be operating a similar routine – or at least explain what plans there are to do so.



Courtesy of a specialist reporter who attended a conference in the USA recently – I’ve heard suggestion that there are calibration problems with the SRC – and that scientific data from the HSRC will be released fairly shortly – but, to be brutally honest, third hand information that may or may not be accurate just isn’t good enough – and if ESA is to stand on the world stage proudly with data in hand saying “look – look at what we’ve done, what we’ve achieved, what we’re able to do – as well as anyone in the world” – then we need to have a level of disclosure much much greater than we have now – or the image of ESA as a whole will, to some extent, move away from that of an equal to NASA ( which is something it should be able to do )



I am hugely proud of Europe’s achievements in space - I see American success and, whereas not so long ago one would thing “wow – I wish we could do that” – now I can say “yes – we CAN do that” – a paradigm shift that has occurred perhaps only in the last 18 months or so – started with MEX, and exploded with Huygens – but there must be transparency and disclosure to keep this pattern on going.


If I get a response - then I'll let you all know. The address I used was david.southwood@esa.int - as that's what I found by googling for D.S.

Doug

[Phil Stooke]

This is a Deimos 'super-resolution' composite (in the sense Ted and I, and others, have used the term... a composite of more than one images, each enlarged and sharpened) from the SRC images on MEX orbit 973. Each crater is accompanied by a 'shadow' above it - not a real shadow, but looking more like a double exposure. This was NOT caused by misregistration in my composite. It's visible in each raw image. It must be related to the issue which is reducing the effective resolution of the SRC images.

Phil