I'd almost rather have the stretching data than the fixed jpgs, but I'll gladly take either one.

Just flat fielded JPG's is more than we could possibly expect and would be a massive improvement - so all kudos to Jim for trying to get that done.

Yes, if they go ahead with this one, they'll be setting standards once again. Standards that will be tough to follow for others.

Now if they could just reduce or eliminate the compression used in the jpegs as well...

I suppose that the key here would be establishing a legal moratorium on publications by non-team-members based upon those images for the first year or two following release.

No - I don't agree they should eliminate the compression. That's the point of them - they're quick-look, rough and ready imagery. There SHOULD be a difference between this stuff and the calibrated product that is used internally. No legal moratorium, just nice JPG's with some RAD IMG's 6 months later. It's a system that works and in some ways is self policing.

Besides, keeping JPEGs at a reasonable compression level (so that it doesn't trash all detail) saves a load of space over PNGs. Let's not get greedy here. Flatfielded and radiometrically calibrated stuff is more than anyone can really hope for. It's icing on the cake.

Sounds pretty much at odds with the US Constitution. You can hide private information all you want, but you can't stop people from talking or writing about factual public information.

Well... copyright protections are not at odds with the Constitution. And I don't mean to say that the images are copyrighted, just to point out that protecting photographs from misappropriation is legal with the usual caveats. I don't know what side of 'fair use' using copyrighted photos in academic papers would fall on. I know you can excerpt copyrighted texts.

Phil Stooke would probably know, since his maps are debatably photographs and are published in copyrighted books.

I always remember this passage from 17 USC § 105, ever since I got that "proud to be an American" feeling when I saw it posted above a copier in the Bodleian Library, next to a passage on the restrictions imposed by Crown Copyright.


Unfortunately, most NASA work is done under contract, rather than by government employees, and is therefore subject to some form of copyright protection.

Steve M

The science data is, however, public domain after that 6 month period. Not copyright can or is held over it. Where a copyright CAN be held is over an 'original work' - which any mosaic can technically be said to be.

Doug

The raw data are not copyrighted, as Doug said. But as soon as you stray from that you need a lawyer! And we're in danger of confusing law and ethics, which are very different things. The science team don't want to be scooped on new discoveries - they suffered through years of anguish and endless committee meetings, and still are up to their ears in planning, so they want - and deserve - a payoff. The current bounty of raw daily images is great for all us enthusiasts, but it's the exception, and everybody involved is perfectly entitled to say "no, sorry, we get it first, you can have it in a few months" as they always did before.

My feeling is, make mosaics and colour composites, make maps, have fun, but don't try to sneak a serious scientific publication out of it until after it's really public in the PDS. I don't care about the letter of the law, it's a matter of ethics.

For my part, when I make a map or polar projection or whatever and post it here, I never claim copyright on the image as it's posted. I might keep a higher resolution or otherwise improved image for my own use as well.

Phil

While I am not particularly big on 'rah-rah' replies, I must say I agree 100% with Phil's well-put post. I have little additional to add.

Beyond 'what can I do', we must ask ourselves 'what should I do'.


-- Pertinax

Another point of view is that since Congress paid for the data, Congress can decide what can and can't be done with it. For example, they could simply require any mission that used public money must promptly (say, within 48 hours) post all raw data. That'd be the end of it. OR, they could decide that it would better serve the public interest to give designated research teams sole access to that data for 6 months (under the same Constitutional authority that lets us have patents -- the key is "temporary" restrictions), in which case it really would be a crime for anyone else to use it without permission.

As far as I know, though, Congress hasn't looked at this issue, since it simply didn't exist before the Internet.

Frankly, I think the "open data" approach is far the better one. I can't believe scientists would lose interest in any future space missions if they knew they had to make the data public. And, given the creativity of the public that DOES want to look at this stuff, it seems very much in the public interest to display it ASAP.

--Greg

NASA and JPL are not obligated to release Opportunity's and Sprint's camera work to us when it arrives from Mars. They have many policies and rules in place that govern the release of information, and have lots of discretion to decide what to release. Congress has been plenty active in this arena as well, ranging from various secrecy statutes to the Freedom of Information Act. Generally, scientific and technical data does not have to be released by the government in a timely manner. In fact, in many instances data will never be released to those of us in the general public, for example, "defense articles" like much of NASA's launch and tracking system information. However, once the MER photos are released to us, they're simply not "protected"--they can't be copyrighted and we can do anything we d*** well please with them.

We should thank our lucky stars that James Bell, NASA, JPL et. al have decided to release this bounty of images to us, just as they have been doing ever since the rovers landed. Public release of the rover pictures surely advances NASA's goals in space and planetary science. Because of those releases, many members of this forum have been able to contribute greatly to the scientific inquiry. Their contributions would not have been possible without the foresight of those on the rover team to disclose--as much and as soon as possible--all the images we've been privy to.

perharps some telemetry datas ( sol, local-true time, site-drive number, azimute, elevation, cahvor model, ... ) in JPG's EXIF can be really useful .

That's in the filename already.


Doug

yes
but for drive-site we have a probleme with "##"
and if we have directly sol and local true time in exif
you don't need a special program to compute it with spacecraft clock,
you can see them directly with a simple exif viewer or a simple "right click - properties - summary" ( for windows user ) ...

but the most interresting is, i think, the rover position, camera elevation and azimute in exif
we can create a simple program to make panorama without stitching and without external database or metadata.

... or exposure time . Very useful to "calibrate".

Useless without knowing the histogram stretch parameters...

Hum... Okay. So add me histogram paramters, but, I don't know if it's "exifable"...


Just make simple : give us files in RAW format

http://pds-imaging.jpl.nasa.gov/data/mer1-...r1po_0xxx/data/

1080 sols worth to play with. That should keep you busy.

I can not believe people are saying they want more than they already get. We get pictures, from Mars, literally HOURS old. These images are good enough for many people to make brilliant mosaics. A few months later - fully calibrated products are available with every iota of accompanying data that you could possibly imagine. And people are asking for more? I find that dissapointing to be honest.

Doug

Wow! I didn't know this link. Many thanks. I had many time browse the PDS but without success . Thanks again.

You probably haven't seen this site either, it allows you to preview the images before downloading the entire file.

http://anserver1.eprsl.wustl.edu/

... and replaced by nicely encoded, high frequency flatfield noise. You wouldn't be seeing much more real detail yet the filesizes would skyrocket.

This has not been my experience. Take a diff between pixels of a low compression image with the original and the difference approaches nil. Of course some variety of wavelet compression would be an even better choice, but I didn't want to open that can of worms.

It's virtually eliminated with the calibrated IMG's. What you're actually suffering is chronic impatience.

I'm not going to let people come here and moan about the quality of what MER is putting on the web - period. The JPG's, the PCTDB, the very rapid release of calibrated products on the PDS. MER is the standard to which other missions should aspire. I strongly believe that the scientists are entitled to have their data for a period of time. Giving us SLIGHTLY degraded quality images in real time is a fundamental paradigm shift that has let us come along for the ride.

The compression doesn't matter one bit - for the purpose for which they are intended. They are more than sufficient for the creation of mosaics and animations. How much of a compromise does that compression do to exquisite work like this
http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/~jcanvin/me...volume_full.jpg
or this
http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/~jcanvin/me...ientes_full.jpg

None. If you dragged up an IMG version and the rough JPG version of the same mosaic - flicking between the two with the contrast enhanced...you might be able to tell - but why would you do that - their purpose is served as they are - there is no argument whatsoever to suggest that the quality of the JPG's needs improving. To claim that it does is simply impatience and nothing more. If you want to moan about outreach - there is no shortage of missions for which there is a justifiable reason to moan...but to moan about the quality of MER stuff is fundamentally wrong - and it will NOT happen here.

Doug

There is Cornell's pancam site. The images are already merged to make color images and as far as I can tell they are of the quality your are looking for, I don't seen any compression artifacts when I magnify them. I assume anyone with the skills and software to make there own mosaics knows how to undo the merge.

http://marswatch.astro.cornell.edu/pancam_...ent/images.html

Let me clarify my position a bit. My comments regarding compression were really intended to motivate subsequent missions, particularly as bandwidth and storage becomes cheaper over time - overall MER has done a great job. Beyond that, my quest for image quality has less to do with mosaics than with navigation and exploration of distant features. I have found jpeg compression artifacts troublesome when attempting to do photogrammetric range finding and 3D surface reconstruction, not to mention trying to identify distant features on the horizon.

I didn't mean to sound critical of MER either. My thinking is that Congress should require all future missions that receive US funding to meet the same standard.

--Greg

http://www.planetary.org/news/2007/1031_Ma...ate_Spirit.html

Sad to see the end of Mini-TES, for now at least. Who would have guessed that this would have killed them, rather than the cold! But with 650 Watts..Opportunity can just go "Winter? What winter!"

Doug

That 600wh sort of caught me by surprise. I'd be curious to know where she was when those cleaning events occurred, perhaps as we've seen from overhead there is a prevailing breeze through this little canyon we call Duck Bay.

If only there were a breeze at Gusev. Haven't seen any dust devils for a long, long time.

Still, while there's (robotic) life, there's (robotic?) hope.

http://www.planetary.org/news/2007/1130_Ma...ate_Spirit.html

http://www.planetary.org/news/2007/1231_Ma...ate_Spirit.html

Happy New Year to all

Wow!! That was a good article.

I'm glad the rovers are currently is good health; but I am worried about Spirit. Spirit may be able to survive this winter, but the trend for efficiency of solar cells dropping with each winter indicates that this is the last winter that the rover might survive. That means we have about two more years with Spirit and that is about it.

Opportunity is a different story. It will survive this winter easily and will likely survive several more winters (as long as other systems remain healthy). We may have another 4 to 6 years of rover viability for Opportunity--maybe more. That means we should be able to finish the science at Victoria and be well into the mission out on the plains. Given the health of Opportunity, I think it is appropriate to discuss a possible mission beyond the plain. Can Opportunity make it to another big crater? I always doubted it until recently.

It's not the efficiency that's dropping - that's probably a bad choice of words all round - it's the dust loading. One good cleaning event and we're back to 10-20-30 percent.

And we're not having another 'after victoria' discussion about driving 15km to another crater - there's one already.

Doug

Well, cleaning events do help; but they require a bit of luck. The long term trend that I used includes cleaning events. So although we could get lucky, IMO we cannot count on Spirit making it through another winter beyond this current one. Yet, that still means we might have two years left for science with this particular rover.

I thought I read somewhere that the rover batteries are only good for a certain number of charge/discharge cycles, and that (if nothing else), this will limit the lifetime of the rovers.

However, despite several minutes of searching (even resorting to using the competitor's search engine) I can't find anything giving an actual maximum life expectancy number.

--Greg

There are PDF's at the JPL tech reports server that discuss it - and at 1000 cycles, something like 80% capacity should remain.

Doug

http://www.planetary.org/news/2008/0131_Ma...ate_Spirit.html

I'll take the following sentence from this latest update: The year ahead -- 2008 -- is, in a capsule, all about survival for Spirit and moving on for Opportunity.

Some geological details about the Victoria layers in the new update:And about proceeding farther downslope:

Hey! Looks like my old lady made it there...and is going for a date!

Man...why didn't I make it all the way to CNN?!

http://www.planetary.org/news/2008/0229_Ma...ate_Spirit.html

A special attention to El Dorado...
I don't get tired of it...

Let us see what secrets the dunes have yet to reveal...

One seriously odd statement about Oppy in the update:Winter haven?? I've heard nothing about parking Oppy for the winter. It's She's got plenty of power.

That really is a curious comment. I find it difficult to imagine parking Opportunity for the winter when all reports suggest she has watt hours to spare, and no shortage of targets. I hate to sound negative, but the large number of typographical and grammatical errors in this update lead me to suspect that no one has proof-read the article. This could simply be a mistake that was not recognized.

I suppose it's possible he simply meant they foresee 6-8 months of science in the general area, and the winter haven comment was a bit tongue in cheek. That seems excessive, given the time spent at the other layers. I guess it's all speculation until someone in the know fills us in.

Brian

That's a possibility but I must say that I realy like these updates. We sometimes find afterward answers we were looking for about what was the meaning of this drive or this manoeuvre etc. I'm not sure TPS intended to keep these updates that long but there are informations we don't find elsewhere.