News rover 10
Their lenses will also have a wider field of view. On the new rover, the engineering cameras have been upgraded to acquire high-resolution, 20-megapixel color images. These produced 1-megapixel images in black and white. The Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity rovers were all designed with engineering cameras for planning drives (Navcams) and avoiding hazards (Hazcams). One of the enhanced engineering cameras with a prototype lens for the Hazcams, which will watch for obstacles encountered by the Mars 2020 rover. "They're useful for both long-range and near-field science targets." "Routinely using 3-D images at high resolution could pay off in a big way," Bell said. Documenting details like these is important: They could reveal geologic clues and serve as "field notes" to contextualize samples for future scientists. Features like erosion and soil textures can be spotted at the length of a soccer field. Mastcam-Z's stereoscopic cameras can support more 3-D images, which are ideal for examining geologic features and scouting potential samples from long distances away. The "Z" stands for "zoom," which will be added to an improved version of Curiosity's high-definition Mastcam, the rover's main eyes. The cameras on 2020 will include more color and 3-D imaging than on Curiosity, said Jim Bell of Arizona State University, Tempe, principal investigator for 2020's Mastcam-Z. These sensors were later commercialized by the Photobit Corporation, founded by former JPL researcher Eric Fossum, now at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire. In the 1980s, JPL developed active-pixel sensors that used less power than earlier digital camera technology.
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That advantage represents a full circle of development, from NASA to the private sector and back. "Each successive mission is able to utilize these improvements, with better performance and lower cost." "Camera technology keeps improving," said Justin Maki of JPL, Mars 2020's imaging scientist and deputy principal investigator of the Mastcam-Z instrument. They represent a steady progression since Pathfinder: after that mission, the Spirit and Opportunity rovers were designed with 10 cameras each, including on their landers Mars Science Laboratory's Curiosity rover has 17. Sk圜am: A suite of weather instruments will include a sky-facing camera for studying clouds and the atmosphere.Īll these cameras will be incorporated as the Mars 2020 rover is built at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.Lander Vision System Camera: Will use computer vision to guide the landing, using a new technology called terrain relative navigation.
Cameras have shrunk in size, increased in quality and are now carried in every cellphone and laptop. Photo sensors that were improved by the space program have become commercially ubiquitous. Since then, camera technology has taken a quantum leap.