[X] My Assistant

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/spotlight/20050412.html

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will follow clues to where the lost Mars Polar Lander and Beagle 2 might be.

[djellison]

MOC can do 1.5m/pixel - but the downrange sampling is upped to 0.5m/pixel with CPROTO.

As for higher resolution - it would be hard, given that there's an atmosphere in the way, to go any higher than that -and even if we could, we dont have the bandwidth to send much more than that back to earth at the moment

Doug

[dvandorn]

MOC can do 1.5m/pixel - but the downrange sampling is upped to 0.5m/pixel with CPROTO.

As for higher resolution - it would be hard, given that there's an atmosphere in the way, to go any higher than that -and even if we could, we dont have the bandwidth to send much more than that back to earth at the moment

Doug

Yeah, you'd have to use adaptive optics to adjust for atmospheric shimmer (even in such a thin atmosphere as Mars'), and that would be prohibitively heavy and expensive to get into Martian orbit...

So, we're going to see a total increase from the absolute best MOC resolution of 50cm in downrange sampling to to the HiRise resolution of 30cm in all dimensions. It might not sound like much, but it is nearly twice the resolution, and will be the standard operating parameter for the camera, not a "pushed" mode. I am SO looking forward to seeing the first images...

Will MTO's arrival in 2009 help increase the total bandwidth such that MRO and other orbiters (including possibly a *really* venerable MGS) might take advantage and toss as much down the pipe as possible? Or is MTO not designed to support other orbiters?

-the other Doug