A New Map of Mars, Made From 51,000 Orbital Images

  • 📰 universetoday
  • ⏱ Reading Time:
  • 77 sec. here
  • 3 min. at publisher
  • 📊 Qulity Score:
  • News: 34%
  • Publisher: 63%

CRISM has played a huge role in the exploration of Mars. It's about to be decommissioned, but not before giving us a gift.

United States Headlines News

United States Latest News, United States Headlines

Jezero Crater on Mars was the landing site for NASA’s Mars 2020 rover. The colours in this image show surface minerals detected by CRISM, which helped identify the crater as a desirable landing site. The green colour represents carbonates, which are good at preserving fossils. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

A near-global map of Mars, composed of nearly 51,000 mapping strips mosaicked into 1,764 tiles. The grid overlay shows the boundaries of the individual tiles. An additional 100 tiles in each polar region — not included here — are being processed separately. The map shows familiar large-scale surface brightness patterns, largely governed by the distribution of bright-red iron oxide-bearing dust. Darker, relatively dust-free regions consist of impact-fragmented crustal rock and wind-blown sand.

Processing this much data into one cohesive map is a complicated task requiring powerful computing resources. It takes time to optimize the maps and account for environmental conditions and discrepancies between the different images.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is still going strong and has exceeded its planned mission length by several years. In 2018 NASA said it wants to keep the spacecraft operating through the late 2020s, at least. One of the obstacles to greater longevity is its aging gyroscopes, but NASA said they can rely on stellar navigation to maintain the spacecraft’s orientation. MRO’s HiRISE camera has captured almost 70,000 high-resolution images of the surface of Mars.

“The warranty on this thing expired years ago before my kids were even born,” Seelos said. “The CRISM investigation has been very long-lived, and the fact that we were able to take data for so many years is amazing. The release of these tiles is a kind of exclamation point for the instrument’s legacy.”

We have summarized this news so that you can read it quickly. If you are interested in the news, you can read the full text here. Read more:

 /  🏆 297. in US
 

Thank you for your comment. Your comment will be published after being reviewed.
Please try again later.

Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.

Pike Place Market launches brand-new interactive Market MapPike Place Market announced the launch of its brand-new interactive Market Map to help guide visitors around the 9-acre market. Just had to pay $180.00 for My supposed to be $30.00 car tabs. Whatever Jaydolf GovInslee & Toady Ferguson AGOWA 'Crooks' 'Enemy of the People' Can we mark specific tents, vagrants, and feces? Maybe the map should have a safety warning for those not in the know.
Source: KIRO7Seattle - 🏆 271. / 63 Read more »

Mars clouds take center stage in new NASA project looking for volunteersA Red-Planet crowdsourcing project just launched on Zooniverse. I bet it does... Probably not the best idea though. Can't they just use the Google GoogleLens technology to write a program that identifies them all in a few hours? Dear NASY just look at the type of clouds as there are many different types and each type corresponds to different temperatures like of rising heat or other reactive air field conditions..Are the clouds fluffy and puffy lol ? Or cumulonimbus lol
Source: SPACEdotcom - 🏆 92. / 67 Read more »

What Made the New Stanley Cup Champions So FrighteningThe NHL might not get a team as thoroughly scary as them for some time. Nice smile!! Pretty good— the Bluejackets swept them in 2019 .😬
Source: Slate - 🏆 716. / 51 Read more »

Researchers describe new kangaroo fossil from Papua New GuineaAustralian paleontologists from Flinders University have described a new genus of giant fossil kangaroo from the mountains of central Papua New Guinea.
Source: physorg_com - 🏆 388. / 55 Read more »

New York's 1st legal marijuana crop sprouts under the sun - New York Amsterdam NewsNew York’s recreational marijuana market is beginning to sprout, literally, with thin-leafed plants stretching toward the sun in farms around the state. In a novel move, New York gave 203 hemp growers first shot at cultivating marijuana destined [...] FREE but taking people out of their minds....🤪
Source: NYAmNews - 🏆 269. / 63 Read more »

New Parents Priyanka Chopra & Nick Jonas Are Glowing in These New Vacation Photos.priyankachopra and nickjonas spend quality time together on vacation with tons of sweet PDA.
Source: SheKnows - 🏆 558. / 51 Read more »