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Navcam
Navcam, short for navigational camera, is a type of camera found on certain robotic rovers or spacecraft used for navigation without interfering with scientific instruments. Navcams typically take wide angle photographs that are used to plan the next moves of the vehicle or object tracking. Overview The Mars ''Curiosity'' rover has two pairs of black and white navigation cameras mounted on the mast to support ground navigation. The cameras have a 45 degree angle of view and use visible light to capture stereoscopic 3-D imagery. These cameras, like those on the Mars Pathfinder missions support use of the ICER image compression format. European Space Agency ''Rosetta'' spacecraft used a single camera with 5 degree field of view and 12 bit 1024x1024px resolution allowing for visual tracking on each of spacecraft approaches to the asteroids and finally the comet. Gallery 20110406 PIA13809 D2011 0404 D036 cropped-full.jpg, ''Curiosity'' rover's mast with two navcams MER Pancam.JP ...
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Curiosity Rover
''Curiosity'' is a car-sized Mars rover designed to explore the Gale crater on Mars as part of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission. ''Curiosity'' was launched from Cape Canaveral (CCAFS) on November 26, 2011, at 15:02:00 UTC and landed on Aeolis Palus inside Gale crater on Mars on August 6, 2012, 05:17:57 UTC. The Bradbury Landing site was less than from the center of the rover's touchdown target after a journey. Mission goals include an investigation of the Martian climate and geology, assessment of whether the selected field site inside Gale has ever offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life (including investigation of the role of water), and planetary habitability studies in preparation for human exploration. In December 2012, ''Curiosity'' two-year mission was extended indefinitely, and on August 5, 2017, NASA celebrated the fifth anniversary of the ''Curiosity'' rover landing. On August 6, 2022, a detailed overview of accomplishments b ...
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Mars Exploration Rover
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission was a robotic space mission involving two Mars rovers, ''Spirit (rover), Spirit'' and ''Opportunity (rover), Opportunity'', exploring the planet Mars. It began in 2003 with the launch of the two rover (space exploration), rovers to explore the Martian surface and Geology of Mars, geology; both landed on Mars at separate locations in January 2004. Both rovers far outlived their planned missions of 90 Timekeeping on Mars#Sols, Martian solar days: MER-A ''Spirit'' was active until March 22, 2010, while MER-B ''Opportunity'' was active until June 10, 2018. Objectives The mission's scientific objective was to search for and characterize a wide range of rock (geology), rocks and soils that hold clues to past Water on Mars, water activity on Mars. The mission is part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, which includes three previous successful landers: the two Viking program landers in 1976 and Mars Pathfinder probe in 1997. The total cost o ...
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Hazcam
Hazcams (short for hazard avoidance cameras) are photographic cameras mounted on the front and rear of NASA's ''Spirit'', ''Opportunity'', ''Curiosity'' and ''Perseverance'' rover missions to Mars and on the lower front portion of Chinese ''Yutu'' rover mission to the Moon. Overview The ''Curiosity'' rover's hazcams are sensitive to visible light and return black and white images of resolution 1024 × 1024 pixels."Hazard Avoidance Camera (Hazcam)".
PDS Geosciences Node. Retrieved September 4, 2019.
These images are used by the rovers' internal computer to autonomously navigate around hazards. Due to their positioning on both sides of the rovers, simultaneous images taken by either both front or both rear cameras can be used to produce a
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Pancam
Each Pancam is one of two electronic stereo cameras on Mars Exploration Rovers ''Spirit'' and ''Opportunity''. It has a filter wheel assembly that enables it to view different wavelengths of light and the pair of Pancams are mounted beside two NavCams on the MER camera bar assembly. According to Cornell University it can work with Mini-TES to analyze surroundings. According to a paper about Mars by JPL, the Pancam system can achieve an angular resolution of 300 microradians, which is three times better than the human eye. It can observe 14 spectral bands, and with two side-by side cameras can generate stereoscopic views of Mars, supporting the creation of large Mars panoramas in excess of 10 Gbit uncompressed. ''Spirit'' rover took the highest resolution image ever taken on the surface of another planet up to that time when it landed in 2004. Optics The focal length of the camera is 43 mm with a field of view (FOV) of 16° x 16°. The two cameras are separated by 30&nb ...
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Mars Rover
A Mars rover is a motor vehicle designed to travel on the surface of Mars. Rovers have several advantages over stationary landers: they examine more territory, they can be directed to interesting features, they can place themselves in sunny positions to weather winter months, and they can advance the knowledge of how to perform very remote robotic vehicle control. They serve a different purpose than orbital spacecraft like ''Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter''. A more recent development is the Mars helicopter. , there have been six successful robotically operated Mars rovers; the first five, managed by the American NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, were (by date of Mars landing): ''Sojourner'' (1997), ''Spirit'' (2004–2010), ''Opportunity'' (2004–2018), ''Curiosity'' (2012–), and ''Perseverance'' (2021–). The sixth, managed by the China National Space Administration, is ''Zhurong'' (2021–). On January 24, 2016, NASA reported that then current studies on Mars by ''Opportunit ...
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List Of NASA Cameras On Spacecraft
NASA has operated several cameras on spacecraft over the course of its history. Apollo Program * Apollo TV camera * Hasselblad "Electric Camera" (modified 500 EL) with 70 mm film * Maurer Data Acquisition Camera (DAC) with 16 mm film *Nikon with 35 mm film *Mapping (Metric) Camera (7.6 cm focal length) with 127 mm film, on Apollo 15, 16, and 17 (see Sherman Fairchild#Lunar photography) *Stellar Camera (7.6 cm focal length) with 35 mm film, on Apollo 15, 16, and 17 *Panoramic Camera (61 cm focal length) with 127 mm film, on Apollo 15, 16, and 17 Skylab Personal camera equipment:EP-107 Skylab: A GuidebookChapter 5/ref> *Television camera *16 mm film video camera *35 mm film camera *70 mm film camera Space Shuttle program * Space Shuttle booster cameras. * Space Shuttle External Tank camera * ''Columbia'' ** Shuttle Infrared Leeside Temperature Sensing experiment * Nikon NASA F4 Lunar missions * Pioneer program, 1958–1960 ** '' Pioneer 1'', televisio ...
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ICER
ICER is a wavelet-based image compression file format used by the NASA Mars rovers. ICER has both lossy and lossless compression modes. The Mars Exploration Rovers ''Spirit'' and ''Opportunity'' both used ICER. Onboard image compression is used extensively to make best use of the downlink resources. The ''Curiosity'' rover supports the use of ICER for its navigation cameras (but all other cameras use other file formats). Most of the MER images are compressed with the ICER image compression software. The remaining MER images that are compressed make use of modified Low Complexity Lossless Compression (LOCO) software, a lossless submode of ICER. ICER is a wavelet-based image compressor that allows for a graceful trade-off between the amount of compression (expressed in terms of compressed data volume in bits/ pixel) and the resulting degradation in image quality (distortion). ICER has some similarities to JPEG2000, with respect to select wavelet operations. The developmen ...
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Curiosity On Mars
Curiosity (from Latin '' cūriōsitās'', from ''cūriōsus'' "careful, diligent, curious", akin to ''cura'' "care") is a quality related to inquisitive thinking such as exploration, investigation, and learning, evident by observation in humans and other animals. Curiosity is heavily associated with all aspects of human development, in which derives the process of learning and desire to acquire knowledge and skill. The term ''curiosity'' can also be used to denote the behavior or emotion of being curious, in regard to the desire to gain knowledge or information. Curiosity as a behavior and emotion is attributed over millennia as the driving force behind not only human development, but developments in science, language, and industry. Causes Curiosity can be seen as an innate quality of many different species. It is common to human beings at all ages from infancy through adulthood, and is easy to observe in many other animal species; these include apes, cats, and rodents ...
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Mars Exploration Rover Mission
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Roman god of war. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin atmosphere (less than 1% that of Earth's), and has a crust primarily composed of elements similar to Earth's crust, as well as a core made of iron and nickel. Mars has surface features such as impact craters, valleys, dunes and polar ice caps. It has two small and irregularly shaped moons, Phobos and Deimos. Some of the most notable surface features on Mars include Olympus Mons, the largest volcano and highest known mountain in the Solar System and Valles Marineris, one of the largest canyons in the Solar System. The Borealis basin in the Northern Hemisphere covers approximately 40% of the planet and may be a large impact feature. Days and seasons on Mars are comparable to those of Earth, as the planets have a similar rotation period and tilt ...
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Mars Imagers
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Roman god of war. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin atmosphere (less than 1% that of Earth's), and has a crust primarily composed of elements similar to Earth's crust, as well as a core made of iron and nickel. Mars has surface features such as impact craters, valleys, dunes and polar ice caps. It has two small and irregularly shaped moons, Phobos and Deimos. Some of the most notable surface features on Mars include Olympus Mons, the largest volcano and highest known mountain in the Solar System and Valles Marineris, one of the largest canyons in the Solar System. The Borealis basin in the Northern Hemisphere covers approximately 40% of the planet and may be a large impact feature. Days and seasons on Mars are comparable to those of Earth, as the planets have a similar rotation period and tilt ...
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Spacecraft Instruments
A spacecraft is a vehicle or machine designed to fly in outer space. A type of artificial satellite, spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including communications, Earth observation, meteorology, navigation, space colonization, planetary exploration, and transportation of humans and cargo. All spacecraft except single-stage-to-orbit vehicles cannot get into space on their own, and require a launch vehicle (carrier rocket). On a sub-orbital spaceflight, a space vehicle enters space and then returns to the surface without having gained sufficient energy or velocity to make a full Earth orbit. For orbital spaceflights, spacecraft enter closed orbits around the Earth or around other celestial bodies. Spacecraft used for human spaceflight carry people on board as crew or passengers from start or on orbit ( space stations) only, whereas those used for robotic space missions operate either autonomously or telerobotically. Robotic spacecraft used to support scientific ...
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Space Imagers
Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction. In classical physics, physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of a boundless four-dimensional continuum known as spacetime. The concept of space is considered to be of fundamental importance to an understanding of the physical universe. However, disagreement continues between philosophers over whether it is itself an entity, a relationship between entities, or part of a conceptual framework. Debates concerning the nature, essence and the mode of existence of space date back to antiquity; namely, to treatises like the ''Timaeus'' of Plato, or Socrates in his reflections on what the Greeks called '' khôra'' (i.e. "space"), or in the '' Physics'' of Aristotle (Book IV, Delta) in the definition of ''topos'' (i.e. place), or in the later "geometrical conception of ...
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