NASA's Opportunity rover rolls off lander and onto Mars surface | SF Chron

[Ediacara]

NASA's Opportunity rover rolls off lander and onto Mars surface



ANDREW BRIDGES, AP Science Writer
Saturday, January 31, 2004
(01-31) 06:50 PST PASADENA, Calif. (AP) --

NASA's Opportunity rolled off its lander and onto the rusty soil of Mars early Saturday, a week after the six-wheeled rover arrived on the Red Planet -- and just hours after confirmation of its first major geologic discovery.

Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory erupted in cheers as the first photograph taken by Opportunity following its roll-off appeared on a screen in mission control. More pictures flooded in minutes later to continued cheers and applause.

The images, received shortly after 3 a.m., confirmed Opportunity had joined its twin, Spirit, on the ground.

"Two for two, one dozen wheels on soil," flight director Chris Lewicki said.

More at the San Francisco Chronicle

[Chicago Democrat]

1. Why only Black and White photos?

Spirits photos were in full color, but photos from Opportunity are only Black and White. Did Spirit land in OZ and Opportunity land in Kansas.

[Beaker]

2. spirit's first photos were b&w too...

the colour ones should come in a day or two...

[Baclava]

3. It takes time to hide...

the Blue Sky...more evidence of color-correcting re-programming in action...

[Heyo]

4. Actually.. it's because of this..

Even though both mars rovers are teeming with cameras..

The one that takes the big beautiful high res pictures is the Pancam (panoramic camera)..

the pictures you see here, verification that the drive-off was successful, were taken by either the Hazcam (hazard avoidance camera) or the Navcam (navigation cam).(actually the ones in question are Navcam pics, evident by how close they are to the ground).these are in black and white and lower resolution because they don't need to be very high-end, it saves the power and time it takes to send down huge color panoramas...

By the way, here's how the get the full color pics: They take black and white, red, green, and blue filter pictures, then they combine them and fix the color to match what the eye would see. They do this by having a calibration marker on the rover which is a KNOWN color, so when they are doing the color pictures, they adjust it so that the calibration marker in the pictures looks exactly like the known color that it is supposed to be. It's not like your regular digital camera exactly, but similar.

By the way, there are some color photos from Opportunity down already, a good place to check them out is www.spaceflightnow.com

The color calibration target on the rover can be seen here:


Heyo