Boing Boing » MARS ROVER

Interview with a Mars rover driver: Scott Maxwell of JPL

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 01:57:22 +0000

Photo (NASA JPL): The first two full-resolution images of the Martian surface from the Navigation cameras on NASA's Curiosity rover, which are located on the rover's "head" or mast. The rim of Gale Crater can be seen in the distance beyond the pebbly ground.

Thomas Hayden at science blog The Last Word On Nothing has a wonderful little interview with Scott Maxwell (@marsroverdriver), who works at JPL as a Mars rover driver. Coolest job ever, right?

I had the honor and pleasure of meeting Maxwell at JPL a few weeks before Curiosity touched down, when I accompanied Miles O'Brien on a shoot about MSL for PBS NewsHour. Loved him, and I love how he describes what makes his job so exhilarating:

I don’t think I’ll ever forget the first time I drove her. It was just a few meters along a simple path — we wouldn’t even bother to yawn at it today — but it was magic to me then, as it’s magic to me now. I went home and should have slept, but all I could do was stare at the ceiling, in awe that right then, on Mars, there was a robot doing what I told it to do. It was dead amazing, and that feeling has never left me and I hope it never will.

Read the rest here: SCUBA Diving through the Endless Martian Desert : The Last Word On Nothing.

What NASA fears most on Mars (image)

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 18:31:05 +0000

"Curiosity makes me very angry, very angry indeed!"

By David Silverman, of Simpsons and Tubatron fame.

Mars Curiosity Rover: Boing Boing's $2.5 billion dollar question about image file types, answered by JPL

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 00:30:46 +0000

Photo: Two of the first images transmitted back by Curiosity, as seen on monitors at JPL 20 minutes after the rover landed on Mars. (Xeni Jardin)

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory was a magical place to be last night, as engineers, flight specialists, NASA administrators, space celebrities, and scientists from many fields gathered to witness the landing of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity rover. Those seven minutes of terror ended in a picture-perfect landing: an amazing machine went through a crazy Rube Goldbergian descent sequence, and plopped down about two meters away from its planned destination on the Red Planet's surface.

We witnessed history. It seemed impossible. It was awesome.

I sat in on the post-landing press conference, and live-tweeted the evening at @boingboing. During the press conference, after the high-fives and screams of joy subsided, I asked MSL engineer Adam Steltzner a question about those first two all-important thumbnail images Curiosity sent back—critical because the data they contained would tell NASA if the rover had touched down in a safe spot.

[Video of that Q&A moment here.]

Given the great distance and technical challenges involved in transmitting timely data back from Mars, what file type and image compression algorithm(s) did they use for those first "rush" thumbnails? There's a 14 minute delay involved for any signals from Mars to Earth.

A dorky question, perhaps, but I was curious, and figured nobody else would ask. Things like, "Hey how do you guys feel right now," and "What will Curiosity do next," I knew others would tackle.

Mr. Steltzner didn't have details handy about the image file types used, and he referred me to Mars mission image specialist Justin Maki. Today I checked in with Mr. Maki and his JPL colleagues whose work focuses on data compression and interplanetary data transmission. Here's what I learned.

What space reporter Bill Harwood recounts on SpaceFlightNow is what I witnessed right there in the press room, too:

While engineers did not expect pictures right away, blurry low-resolution thumbnails from the rover's rear hazard avoidance cameras were transmitted within minutes of touchdown showing a wheel on the surface of Mars.
"Odyssey data is still strong," Chen reported. "Odyssey is nice and high in the sky. At this time we're standing by for images..."
"We've got thumbnails," someone said.
"We are wheels down on Mars!" Chen reported.
"Oh my God," someone said in the background.

They arrived faster than any of us in the audience expected, and they were of great significance in the moment. So how did they get to us? JPL imaging specialist Justin Maki, tells Boing Boing:

The images are wavelet-compressed, much like JPEG 2000. The main difference is that the algorithm used on MSL (and MER) use is computationally less complex than JPEG-2000.

The compression software was written at JPL by Aaron Kiely and Matt Klimesh.

Matt tells Boing Boing:

I don't have much to add beyond Justin's answer. It is a custom file format and the compression algorithm is in many ways similar to the algorithm for JPEG-2000 compression, but with lower computational complexity.
No name for the format (and I wouldn't necessarily characterize it as proprietary), but we call the compressor "ICER" (not an acronym, just a rearrangement of the letters of "Rice"; the Rice algorithm is a data compression algorithm first used decades ago).

And Boing Boing reader Darryl Lee points us to this JPL document (PDF) which contains specs for the lower-res cameras used on the MER rovers, Spirit and Opportunity.

"Curiosity has a much higher-resolution camera (MastCam), but the photographs sent last night were from the Hazcams, which are much lower-resolution," Darryl correctly notes.

Snip:

3.2. Image Compression
[48] To maximize the number of images acquired during the mission, virtually all image data will be compressed by the rover CPU (using either lossy or lossless compression) prior to placement into the telemetry stream. To perform this task the rovers will utilize a software implementation of the JPL-developed ICER wavelet-based image compressor [Kiely and Klimesh, 2003], capable of providing lossy and lossless compression. In cases where lossless compression is desired and speed is particularly important, compression will be performed (in software) by a modified version of the low-complexity (LOCO) lossless image compression algorithm [Klimesh et al., 2001; Weinberger et al., 1996]. The MER mission is utilizing state of the art image compression technology by flying compressors that deliver compression effectiveness comparable to that achieved by the JPEG- 2000 image compression standard [Adams, 2001], but with lower computational complexity [Kiely and Klimesh, 2003].

There's more details about ICER and LOCO in there, too.

And there you have it.

More about Curiosity in Boing Boing's archives.

.@xeni @boingboing This is the guy you want. / Here’s my cousin, receiving @marscuriosity’s imagery. Like a boss. #MSL twitter.com/anthonycmaki/s…
— Anthony C. Maki (@anthonycmaki) August 6, 2012

Totally Not Photoshopped photos from Mars (a tumblog of greatness)

Xeni Jardin — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 19:18:47 +0000

More like this: "TOTALLY NOT 'SHOPPED PICS FROM MARS"

(Thanks, Sean Bonner!)

Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity headed for Mars landing. Are you ready?

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 22:45:48 +0000

NASA JPL's nuclear-powered Curiosity rover will try to land at the foot of a 3-mile-high mountain on Mars this Sunday night (technically, early Monday morning) to learn more about the possible building blocks of life there.

The rover is about the size of a car. The whole project costs about $2.5 billion. As you can see from JPL's now-viral "Seven Minutes of Terror" video, the landing process is something of a Rube Goldberg scheme. It'll be amazing if this works. It'll really suck for JPL, and the immediate future of space exploration funding, if it doesn't.

Here's how to follow the Mars rover's journey.

• There will be live broadcasts from JPL streatmed on NASA TV and with live chat via NASA TV. JPL will carry that feed with a live, moderated Web chat at ustream.tv/NASAJPL.

• There will be a NASA Social speaker program (Friday 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. PT), also with live chat at ustream.tv/NASAJPL. There will be participants from NASA HQ, JPL, mission scientists and engineers.

• Landing night broadcasts start 8:30 p.m. PT, Sunday August 5. Again, NASA TV and with live chat at ustream.tv/NASAJPL. Those will go till the wee small hours of Sunday.

• Landing Facebook event page (guests can RSVP to watch the live broadcast, invite their friends and share photos of their landing-night events)

• Eyes on the Solar System computer simulation of entry, descent and landing allows you to hop on board the rover and see what she sees during landing. You can pause time, speed up, slow down, and check out all the parts of the spacecraft. On landing night, there will be a shortcut button that lets you watch a live simulation of what's slated to happen at Mars.

• The Curiosity rover will be live-tweeting the entry, descent and landing process via @MarsCuriosity. JPL will also be sharing news from mission control via @NASAJPL.

(Thanks, Stephanie L. Smith)