NASA Opens Space Image Library 105
slatterz writes with an excerpt from a brief PC Authority article:
"NASA is to make its huge collection of historic photographs, film and video available to the public for the first time. A partnership with the non-profit Internet Archive will see 21 major NASA imagery collections merged into a single searchable online resource. The NASA Images website is expected to go live this week. The content of the site covers all the diverse activities of America's space program, including imagery from the Apollo missions, Hubble Space Telescope views of the universe and experimental aircraft past and present."
The site is working already, and it looks fantastic. Don't hesitate to share any interesting pictures or movies you find.
Re:Rover tracks (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Poor image quality on more recent images (Score:5, Informative)
The old images were taken on real photographic film, which was then brought back to Earth and developed. Hugely expensive due to having to ship all that mass around, and only feasible at all on sample-return missions, but the quality is superb. The new images are taken using digital cameras, JPEG compressed, and transmitted back using the Deep Space Network; as a result, the quality is much lower. (On the other hand, shipping photographic film back from Mars is a little beyond our technical expertise right now.)
It is possible to take high-resolution pictures from Mars, but it's not done very often because it takes too long --- a couple of weeks for a decent panorama; dozens of low-resolution pictures need to be taken, transmitted back, and then pieced together (mostly by hand). It's far more cost-effective to use low-resolution pictures. At that distance bandwidth is the main limitation; they've just been upgraded to a 256kbps connection, and the DSN only listens to them in short windows.
This is less of a problem for spacecraft nearer Earth; JAXA's Kaguya lunar probe can send back HDTV video, for example, although still not live.
Re:Rover tracks (Score:5, Informative)
I really like this image [nasaimages.org] showing the rover tracks leading back to the Apollo 14 Lunar Module "Antares".
Apollo 14 didn't have a rover. Those tracks would have been made by the MET (Modular Equipment Transporter).
The LRV was first flown on Apollo 15 and IMHO was about 1000 times more effective than working without a rover.
Re:Poor image quality on more recent images (Score:3, Informative)
It is not monetary value it's scientific value. Generally the scientist who is has the rights to the telescope time (or who has helped design or run the mission, etc.) has rights to the data for a limited time (I think it's 6 months). After that time the images are released for the (scientific) general public. The difference here is that it's put into a form that the really general public can access the materials.
No reason for paranoia in this case that I'm aware of.