Anybody know the proper credit on MASCOT images?

Anybody know the proper credit on MASCOT images?

What we’ve learned so far from the pictures is it looks like the surface is more consolidated rocks overlaid by a thin layer of particulate material,” Grott said.

I was wondering about the same thing. Either the image sensor isn't aligned to the lens due to temperature shift or related stress, or, it's deliberately like that so when the spacecraft is on the surface, and righted, both the foreground and background will be in focus like a tilt shift camera where you change the angle of the negative to increase depth of field.

Needs a little cosmetic work around the edges of the ellipse, but here's a quick and dirty version:

Anyone know what the scale is we are looking at ?

Needs a little cosmetic work around the edges of the ellipse, but here's a quick and dirty version:

Anyone know what the scale is we are looking at ?

On the morning of the third day, the lander slipped ~5 cm sideways by executing a mini-move to enable stereo imaging for photogrammetric analysis, reaching a third location (MP3)

Similar in theme to my last post. This animation blinks between the Noon image and the Late Afternoon image, showing differences in illumination angle. It looks like the lander has slid a bit between these two images as well, and I'm pretty confident it is not an artifact of the changes in lighting angle.

I added the scale bar according to the original description under the color picture

Images from the Optical Navigation Camera system (ONC) onboard the Hayabusa2 spacecraft show the MASCOT lander during its descent to the surface of asteroid (162173) Ryugu. We used results from a previous stereo-photogrammetric analysis that provided precise ONC image orientation data (camera position and pointing), ONC orthoimages, and an ONC-based 3D surface model to combine them with the visibilities of MASCOT itself and its shadow on-ground within the ONC images. We integrated additional information from instruments onboard MASCOT (MASMag, MARA, MASCam) and derived MASCOT’s release position and modeled its free-fall descent path and its velocity over 350 s from its release at ∼41 m altitude above ground until its first contact with the surface of Ryugu. After first contact, MASCOT bounced over the surface of Ryugu for 663 s and came to rest at its first settlement point after four intermediate surface contacts. We again used ONC images that show MASCOT and partly its shadow and reconstructed the bouncing path and the respective velocities of MASCOT. The achieved accuracy for the entire descent and bouncing path is ∼0.1 m (1σ).

A high-resolution 3D surface model, map-projected to a digital terrain model (DTM), and precisely ortho-rectified context images (orthoimages) of MASCOT landing site area are important data sets for the scientific analysis of relevant data that have been acquired with MASCOT’s image camera system MASCam and other instruments (e.g., the radiometer MARA and the magnetometer MASMag). We performed a stereo-photogrammetric (SPG) analysis of 1050 images acquired from the Hayabusa2 Optical Navigation Camera system (ONC) during the asteroid characterization phase and the MASCOT release phase in early October 2018 to construct a photogrammetric control point network of asteroid (162173) Ryugu. We validated existing rotational parameters for Ryugu and improved the camera orientation (position and pointing) of the ONC images to decimeter accuracy using SPG bundle block adjustment. We produced a high-resolution DTM of the entire MASCOT landing site area. Finally, based on this DTM, a set of orthoimages from the highest-resolution ONC images around MASCOT’s final rest position complements the results of this analysis.

After its release and a descent and bouncing phase, the Hayabusa2 lander MASCOT came to a final rest and MASCOT’s camera MASCam acquired a set of images of the surface of Ryugu. With MASCam’s instantaneous field of view of about 1 mrad, the images provide pixel scales from 0.2 to 0.5 mm pixel−1 in the foreground and up to 1 cm pixel−1 for surface parts in the background. Using a stereo-photogrammetric analysis of the MASCam images taken from slightly different positions due to commanded and unintentional movements of the MASCOT lander, we were able to determine the orientation for the different measurement positions. Furthermore, we derived a 3D surface model of MASCOT’s vicinity. Although the conditions for 3D stereo processing were poor due to very small stereo angles, the derived 3D model has about 0.5 cm accuracy in the foreground at 20 cm distance and about 1.5 cm at a distance of 40–50 cm.

When looking at pictures of the surface of Ryugu, I always feel hard to estimate the scale: are these rocks or pebbles? How big are these rocks ? Obviously, scalebar helps but I find more helpful to add objects of everyday life to the pictures or people to give the scale.

...Here is the result I obtained with Hayabusa 2 and MASCam pictures, adding Harrison Schmitt or a pencil on them...