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Terabytes of Mars Pictures Released to Public

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Mon Jun 04, 2007 02:04 PM
from the bandwidth-fu dept.
Mars Space Science
Riding with Robots writes "The team that runs the high-rez camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has just released more than 1,200 Mars images to the Planetary Data System, NASA's mission data archive. The team has also released 1.7 Terabytes of data to a user-friendly site that allows users to quickly home in on each image, most of which are a gigabyte-sized files measuring 20,000 by 50,000 pixels. Not all the images have been thoroughly studied yet: in the announcement, the camera's lead scientist said, 'These images must contain hundreds of important discoveries about Mars. We just need time to realize what they are.'"
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[+] New Cave Entrances Seen on Mars 110 comments
Riding with Robots writes "The Mars Odyssey orbiter has come across what look to be openings to cavernous spaces under the surface of Mars. NASA reports the find is fueling interest in potential underground habitats and sparking searches for caves elsewhere on the Red Planet. These latest images follow other recent discoveries of intriguing places to explore. From the article: 'The find has led some to wonder if these or other caves on the planet may provide shelter to life or former life on the Red Planet. "Somewhere on Mars, caves might provide a protected niche for past or current life, or shelter for humans in the future," said Tim Titus of the U.S. Geological Survey in Flagstaff. These caves, however, likely never hosted life due to the extreme altitude of their location. "Even if life has ever existed on Mars, it may not have migrated to this height," said Cushing.'"
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Terabytes of Mars Pictures Released to Public 50 Comments More /

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  • With one thing edited out that is.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by 0.693 (989477) on Monday June 04 2007, @02:07PM (#19385557)
    Pictures of the faces on the surfaces! It's a conspiracy. They didn't land a man on the moon, but there is Jesus on Mars.
    • That would explain the Bush Administration's emphasis on a manned mission to Mars.

    • Re:With one thing edited out that is.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Tablizer (95088) on Monday June 04 2007, @03:32PM (#19386691) Homepage Journal
      Pictures of the faces on the surfaces! It's a conspiracy. They didn't land a man on the moon, but there is Jesus on Mars.

      With so many images in the public hands, there are bound to be some interesting "patterns" found that will generate gajillion conspiracy theories. Even with the Viking landers that returned only a limited amount of images, people found letters on rocks. With the rovers, people are finding skulls and lots of other doodads. With even more images out there, there are likely to be even more coincidental shapes found. The more patterns available to search, the more coincidental iconic images will be found. Maybe they'll find Elvis tap dancing with Jesus under a pyrimid. This raises a hugely important question: How do I buy stock in conspiracy books?
           

  • Google Mars (Score:5, Interesting)

    by geekmansworld (950281) on Monday June 04 2007, @02:08PM (#19385567) Homepage
    Does this mean we can look forward to a new, improved Google Mars?

    • meh (Score:5, Funny)

      by Aqua_boy17 (962670) on Monday June 04 2007, @02:17PM (#19385701)
      I personally think I'll wait for the Google street level view. Then maybe we'll be able to catch the 'Face' on Mars walking out of a porn shop.
    • I had no idea there already was a Google mars (www.google.com/mars) until today

      • Re:Google Mars (Score:4, Funny)

        by freakmn (712872) on Monday June 04 2007, @03:40PM (#19386867) Journal
        That's nothing. Check out Google Moon [google.com], and it gives you a detailed map of the moon with place markers for the landings from the Apollo Missions. It's so detailed, in fact, that if you zoom in all the way, you can see the very material that the moon is made from! It's amazing to see, so check it out yourself!
    • Google and NASA could get together on this, and have a feature in which registered users could pin intresting areas and send the location info to astronomers. Maybe the face on Mars' covered side was hiding a hand picking it's noze? Inquiring minds want to know!
    • Maybe, and perhaps Mr. Tim Ankers can use these photos with his Merlindown software mentioned here [slashdot.org] to find signs of Martians and their crashed saucers from the comfort of his chair.
  • Let the Data mining begin :)
  • All that hard drvie space could be used for porn!

  • NOW we know what a home user needs Terabytes of storage for. NAS for everyone!

  • Classified Images (Score:3, Funny)

    by realisticradical (969181) on Monday June 04 2007, @02:10PM (#19385611) Homepage
    Bah, obviously they're fake like the moon landing. They're covering for the real reason we went, to spy on the great Martian civilizations.

  • Gigabyte files? (Score:5, Funny)

    by WaZiX (766733) on Monday June 04 2007, @02:10PM (#19385617)
    And the site posted on Slashdot?

    Bye Bye server!

  • Darn undiscovered discoveries... (Score:5, Funny)

    by VidEdit (703021) on Monday June 04 2007, @02:11PM (#19385633)
    " 'These images must contain hundreds of important discoveries about Mars. We just need time to realize what they are.'" ...er, and discover them.
    • If a discovery occurs on an empty Martian landscape, and no one's there to see it, is it really a discovery? Whew, this science story is really putting the philosophical back in natural philosophy.
    • "You see, there are known knowns and known unknowns. But we didn't know about the unknown knowns until they were known. The face on Mars is a known known, but why it's there is a known uknown. So, there are 1.7 terabyes of data full of known unknowns that hopefully will become known knowns. But as to when we'll get the time to do that, that's a known unknown."
      - D. Rumsfeld, NASA Spokesman
    • At last, the elusive second step:

      1) Take pictures of other planets
      2) release pictures to geeks
      3) Scienc^H^H^H^H^H^HProfit!

  • The Terrorists Win (Score:5, Funny)

    by drooling-dog (189103) on Monday June 04 2007, @02:13PM (#19385653) Homepage
    Oh, that's just great... Now The Terrorists will know where to put their Martian bombz.

  • Stress test (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 04 2007, @02:13PM (#19385657)
    Terrabytes of data, linked to slashdot...seriously what could go wrong?

  • Fake! (Score:4, Funny)

    by suv4x4 (956391) on Monday June 04 2007, @02:15PM (#19385673)
    Those fotos are all fake: NASA setup a Mars stage on the Moon, and colored it red in Photo Shop. They used Total Recal as a referens!!

    Such obvios scam, I can't believe youv fallen for it, guyz!
    • Those fotos are all fake: NASA setup a Mars stage on the Moon

      This previos statement of main, makes it look as if I actually said NASA went to the Moon. But you didn't read between the lines:

      What I mean is, the stage on the Moon is fake too, so they in fact setup the Mars stage on the Moon stage on Earth.

      As a proof: desaturate the "Mars" fotos: observ, they look as if shot on the Moon. Now look at the original fotos, play Total Recal. They are both red.

      Now colorize the photos and put blue sky: they look like

  • /. ed (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 04 2007, @02:18PM (#19385715)
    Anybody have a mirror up yet?

    • ...of pixels.


      Well, there may be billions of pixels, but I am having some sort of transfer problem, so all I see is a pale red dot. I mean, with all I'm seeing, I have to wonder if we actually sent any space ships to Mars, or if they were all just pretend Space Ships of the Imagination...
  • I SEE JOHN CARTER! I SEE JOHN CARTER!!

    Ooh, and Ransom is over there with the giant manatee-things...

    Ummm...someone needs to toss Arnie a oxygen mask, or something, his eyes look funny...

    And what are those funny-looking explosions...ah, nothing, just volcanoes.

  • I wonder how long before... (Score:3, Funny)

    by erroneus (253617) on Monday June 04 2007, @02:23PM (#19385795) Homepage
    ...we see some really interesting images pointed out indicating just about anything imaginable. :) If every hispanic sees Jesus in a tortilla or the bark of a tree, there's bound to be interesting things on Mars's surface too. I'd like to see someone hack into the sites hosting the images, photoshop some 'aliens' in there and over-write the originals. :) That'd be too funny.
    • Possibly some "animal tracks" around those giant pitch-black caves that they've shown photos of. That would be so awesome.

  • free images of Earth and Mars (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 04 2007, @02:29PM (#19385867)
    It's funny that freely available satellite images of Mars have greater resolution than freely available images of Earth.
    • Yeah, it's almost as if the images of Earth had been derezzed for some reason...

      • Yeah, it's almost as if the images of Earth had been derezzed for some reason...

        They were...the cameras on the satellites are not Microsoft Vista Approved.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by FleaPlus (6935)
      It's funny that freely available satellite images of Mars have greater resolution than freely available images of Earth.

      Actually, I wonder how much of that is due to the fact that Mars has a much thinner atmosphere than Earth, which blurs satellite photographs less.
  • if only nasa would follow an 'open source' attitude similar to FSF and GNU/Linux, we'd be on mars in a couple of years. The 'keep everyone in the dark' attitude may have served a purpose during the cold war ... but now seems a little dated. of course, releasing these photos is a start. however, they could have had that start long ago....

    just my two cents.
    • Your post shows a complete lack of knowledge of how release of NASA technologies works.

      NASA would LOVE for you to take their work and turn it into a new product or business. They have a whole office dedicated to it. See http://www.ip.nasa.gov/ [nasa.gov]

      Also, NASA already does have several open source applications (maybe you've heard of World Wind???), see http://opensource.arc.nasa.gov/ [nasa.gov]
      • Pretty much everyone qualified in the fields involved in getting people to mars already works for or with Nasa or the ESA,

        because the wright brothers were the only qualified aeronautical engineers of their time. wtf.

        ever heard that expression of "another set of eyes can catch more mistakes"? if you have 100,000 to 1,000,000 people (although untrained) sifting through photos, and documents, don't you think that we'd start having a 'industrial revolution' all over again, for space? kind of like when we (t
  • TV tells me Megatron is there, and TV never lies.

  • Wrong title? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 04 2007, @02:38PM (#19385973)
    I thought we had Terrabytes of Earth pictures. Wouldn't we have Marsbytes of Mars pics?
  • I wonder how many people will try to look for sunbathing girls in here.

  • Now we can begin planning the full-scale invasion of Mars! We'll give them pesky green-skins what fer!!

  • Hmmm... one terabyte at an optimistic 2 Mbps is...

    1 terabyte = 8.79609302 × 10^12 bits
    (8.79609302 × (10^12)) / 2 000 000 = 4 398 046.51 seconds.
    4 398 046.51 / 3 600 = 1 221.67959 hours.

    (thanks google)

    Well, maybe it'd be quicker if I just browse the site online.

  • JPEG2000 (Score:4, Informative)

    by teridon (139550) on Monday June 04 2007, @03:33PM (#19386713) Homepage
    The images are in the (unpopular?) JPEG2000 format; you'll probably need a special viewer to see them. See their FAQ from the google cache [209.85.165.104] (since the site may go down...)

    If you're using Windows, the FAQ claims that IrfanView will work -- but I never had any luck with it. Despite having 2GB of memory in my computer, I always got an "out of memory" error when attempting to load the ~500MB images. The plugin from Expressview worked for me.

      • "Down Here" is not the same as "Out There" when it comes to scientific research. Besides, we spent $200+ billions USD turning Iraqi sand red with blood. Which red sand will benefit humanity in the long run, Martian or Iraqi?

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Grishnakh (216268)
        Why not do both? After all, none of this scientific research really costs that much (at least when you're talking about unmanned probes, not manned missions) compared to the Oil Wars. A few tens of millions of dollars is cheap, really.

        Besides, it's easier to find interesting information by just sending probes to other celestial bodies, plus it lays the groundwork for future manned missions which can be useful not just for science, but also industrial applications such as mining. After all, we're facing a

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