Posted on 02/09/2018 10:52:22 AM PST by Voption
"...some HiRISE images taken in 2017 and early 2018 show slight blurring not seen earlier in the mission. The cause is under investigation. The percentage of full-resolution images with blurring peaked at 70 percent last October, at about the time when Mars was at the point in its orbit farthest from the Sun. The percentage has since declined to less than 20 percent. Even before the first blurred images were seen, observations with HiRISE commonly used a technique that covers more ground area at half the resolution. This still provides higher resolution than any other camera orbiting Mars — about 2 feet (60 centimeters) per pixel — and little blurring has appeared in the resulting images."
(Excerpt) Read more at behindtheblack.com ...
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Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. It’s doing pretty well for being 12 years old.
Certainly being a child during Apollo missions I love space talk and a nice break from Lock Her Up....
Think about the technology on the Voyager mission and is that not still sending us signals? I could look it up but does anybody know?
Amazing!
Will we see the launch of the Mars mission in our life time?
Ice on the lens?.................
Yes, they are weak but still there.............
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/09/voyager-interstellar-space/538881/
My brother-in-law is on the MRO team. This orbiter has way out-performed it’s design expectations. It has been a terrific piece of science technology. It also relays info from the rovers and other surface experiments back to earth. It will be interesting to hear him discuss this lens blurring issue. They will be “all over it.”
John Batchelor might have something on this in his talkie tonight An amateur astronomer he usually keeps the last segment of his radio show to those developments.
Good stuff.
I was fortunate to witness Apollo 8 launch in 1968 as a kid. Utterly amazing.
Trying to mix the Topics just a bit-—I get sick of 24/7 politics. (I’m new, hope I’m not violating any norms.)
Very COOL!
Thank you for bringing up the John Batchelor Show— he regularly covers Space Topics at a high level of discourse.
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