Spirit rover. Mars rover Spirit. Improved data compression

At the end of 2003, spacecraft arriving one after another from Earth to Mars were a little crowded in its orbit. By this time, two previously launched satellites were already orbiting the Red Planet - 2001 Mars Odyssey and Mars Global Surveyor. Japanese interplanetary station Nozomi ("Hope") the first of the newcomers approached Mars, but could not enter its orbit, and, flying at a distance of 1,000 km from the planet, went forever into the depths of space.

Following the failed Japanese hope, the British descent module also failed. beagle-2, no signal was received from him. Space Beagle could not repeat the success of the ship of the same name, which made a round-the-world voyage Charles Darwin.

However, the main station Mars Express European Space Agency, which delivered the lander, successfully entered orbit and became the first European satellite of Mars. The next to approach the Red Planet are NASA-launched twin spacecraft with rovers Spirit and Opportunity on board. Both stations with a small gap in time made a safe landing, which looked quite impressive.

The inhabitants of Mars, if they really existed, would be quite surprised by the spectacle that unfolded over the equatorial region of their planet on January 3, 2004 according to the earth's calendar. First, a fiery trail flashed high in the sky, resembling a meteor.

Where it went out, a bright dot appeared, moving smoothly across the sky and gradually increasing in size. The Martians might call it a parachute if they were familiar with such a means of air travel. Then, under the parachute, a white cocoon began to swell, resembling a lump of giant ping-pong balls stuck together, consisting of 24 convex hemispheres.

In the immediate vicinity of the surface of Mars, a parachute thrown aside by a directed explosion of squibs bounced to the side, brake engines flared up and went out, and from a height of 10-15 m the cocoon fell onto the planet, jumped several meters, fell again, jumped again - and so on five times .

Each jump became lower and lower until the strange object froze motionless, losing its shape, and finally completely limp - as if air had been let out of an inflatable toy. When the deflated shell fell to the ground, it was discovered that inside it was a metal platform, on which there was a complex structure with six wheels - three on each side.

Moreover, the wheels were strangely turned up and pressed to the sides. After some time, the unit “came to life” and, straightening the wheel supports one after the other, rose to its full height, like a newborn foal. 20 days later, this whole picture was repeated to the smallest detail, but in a completely different region of Mars - on the opposite side of the planet.

Thus began the Martian odyssey of two robotic rovers who arrived from Earth to search for the answer to the age-old question: "Is there life on Mars?"

Names for travelers

While the rovers were preparing for the flight from Earth to Mars, they were called, as usual in technical instructions, rather boring - MER-A and MER-B. It was an abbreviation Mars Exploration Rover (Martian research rover).

Competition for proper names for each of them, announced NASA among schoolchildren, attracted nearly 10,000 participants. The chosen names, as well as the name of the winner of the competition, were solemnly announced in a live television report from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral on June 8, 2003 - the day before the first spacecraft was launched. The head of NASA and a little blonde girl removed a piece of fabric that covered the stand, and everyone saw two words of multi-colored letters - Spirit and Opportunity - "Spirit" and "Opportunity".

A nine-year-old third grade student from an Arizona city Scottsdale Sophie Collis, who became the winner of the competition, offered these words, remembering her childhood dream of flying to the stars.

"Star Spirit" was born to her when she was still living in an orphanage in Siberia. Adopted a few years ago by an American family, Sophie now dreams of becoming an astronaut. Supervisor NASA Sean 0'Keefe noted that Sophie "inherited in her upbringing the spirit of two great space powers."

Interestingly, she lives near Flagstaff - the town from which he conducted his observations of Mars Percival Lowell, who devoted 20 years of his life to the study of the Martian expanses, and where the observatory that bears his name is now located. Quite unexpectedly, after a year and a half, these names were further consolidated in the expanses of space.

In January 2005, at the suggestion of a Dutch astronomer who discovered two new asteroids, the International Astronomical Union named them Spirit and Opportunity, thus marking the anniversary of the successful operation of the rovers on the surface of Mars.

This marked the first time that asteroids were named after space stations. Until now, the names of mythological characters, the names of people and the names of cities have been used for this. Now, in their orbits, which lie between Mars and Jupiter, the stone namesakes of the rovers are moving - the small asteroids Spirit and Opportunity. The diameter of the first is 5 km, and the second - 7. They make one revolution around the Sun in 8 years.

water hunters

The forerunners of the rovers - two fixed Viking stations that flew to the Red Planet almost 30 years ago - in 1976 - failed to find traces of life using biological analyzers. Therefore, a different task was set before the rovers - the search for traces of liquid water remaining in geological formations.

Now the conditions on the surface of Mars are such that water in liquid form cannot exist there - it will freeze and quickly evaporate in a cold and extremely rarefied atmosphere. But on the surface of the planet, according to images from artificial satellites, numerous river channels were found - with tributaries, islands, branches and backwaters. This means that in the past the climate here was different and liquid water flowed on the surface of the planet.

However, in order to “cut through” the river channel, a short-term release of a large water mass is also sufficient. And for the origin of life, a very long existence of a humid climate is required. Therefore, the rovers were tasked with searching for geological formations, the formation of which requires long-lived reservoirs. The discovery of such traces may indicate that there were once the necessary conditions for the origin of life on Mars.

The rovers were sent to areas where traces of water could be found with the greatest probability. So, Spirit landed in crater Gusev, located at 15° south latitude and 185° west longitude. The diameter of this crater is estimated at 180 km, its dimensions are similar to by the Aral Sea. An ancient riverbed flows into the crater, in which there is no water now.

The study of satellite images showed that in the past the Gusev crater was a lake. It is named after Russian astrophysicist Matvei Matveevich Gusev (1826-1866), who created one of the world's first photographic services of the Sun. To the Red Army soldier Gusev, who flew to Mars in the novel Alexei Tolstoy "Aelita" the name of the crater is irrelevant, although the coincidence is funny.

The second rover Opportunity- sank to a plateau Meridian, located almost on the equator on the side of Mars opposite from the Gusev crater. According to observations from satellites in this region of Mars, an increased concentration of hematite, an iron-containing mineral, which is formed in the aquatic environment on Earth, was found.

On the very first panoramic picture of the area, transmitted by television cameras Spirit, the hills near the horizon are visible, which became the main goal of his journey. On the way to them, he “looked” from above into the Bonneville crater (on the 68th and 69th sols of his stay on the Red Planet), named after an ancient lake in North America, but did not go down inside. Size bonneville crater- about 200 meters. The rocks scattered in the area are probably subsurface material ejected from a meteorite impact that created the crater...

Further towards the hilly area, he moved along the flat bottom of the Gusev crater, simultaneously performing analyzes of the chemical composition of many stones. As a result of this journey, soil deposits with oblique bedding were discovered, the origin of which is most likely again associated with the water that once flowed here. Climbing the slope of the hill, by the beginning of March 2005, Spirit was already at a height of 60 m above the plain. In height to the top of the hill, there were still about 30 m, but in reality the length of the rover's route was much longer. By this time, Spirit had traveled a total of 4.5 km across the surface of Mars.

"Milestones" of the journey of the Spirit rover

Colombian mountains:

The Spirit rover on its journey across the surface of Mars reached the Columbia Mountains. This image, which shows two hills, was taken in early June 2004, when the rover was just approaching them. The scenery shown in the true color image is very accurate to what people would see if they were on the rover. The red color in which stones, hills and even the sky are painted is explained by the fact that reddish sand is widespread everywhere on Mars.

After landing on the surface of the red planet in January 2004, Spirit traveled more than 3 km by June 2004. The researcher - an automaton, the control and programming of which is carried out remotely from the Earth, studied a rock called Pot of gold. While on the other side of Mars is Spirit's twin, Opportunity, explored unusual-looking stones inside a recess called endurance crater.

What is it like to climb a hill and look at the view of Mars from there? Such an opportunity was provided to the Spirit rover in early June 2004, when it entered one of the peaks Columbia hills. From there, the rover was able to view the interior plains and the distant rampart Gusev crater behind the exit of rocks, named "Longhorn".

The Spirit rover continues to uncover evidence that the shapes of many rocks have been altered by exposure to ancient water. Spirit and its counterpart, the Oppotunity rover, had by then completed their three-month missions, but their condition is still good enough to allow them to continue exploring Mars.

Mars attack:

The Spirit rover at the end of June 2004 again attacked Mars. However, what may appear to be a military attack in this image was another scientific attack - the rover was instructed to examine at close range several interesting rocks near hills of Columbia.

This image was taken by the front camera to detect Spirit's obstructions. It shows a device for moving equipment, which directed a camera connected to a microscope towards a stone named "Breadbox".

The images taken by this camera show the surface of the rock, which is made up of basalt that has been exposed to groundwater. Formations with a similar origin can be found, for example, in the Western Desert of Egypt on Earth. This image was taken on June 30, 2004, on the 175th Martian day of the Spirit rover's visit to the red planet. The structure of the rovers and their tools Mars Exploration rovers will try to determine the history of the geology and climate of places on Mars that scientists believe were favorable for the formation of life. Each rover is equipped with a set of tools that will be used for research.

For the mission Mars Exploration There are the following research priorities:

Search for a variety of rocks and soils containing information about the activity of water (minerals, precipitation, evaporation, hydrothermal activity)

Determination of the mineral content in space at the landing site.

Determination of the geological processes that took place on Mars.

Refinement and confirmation of remote sensing data at landing sites.

To perform scientific tasks, all-terrain vehicles have the following devices:

Inspection tools:

A high resolution panoramic camera will take stereo images. It complements the navigation cameras of the all-terrain vehicle. Panoramas from Mars will be very high resolution. The angular resolution of the camera is 3 times higher than on Mars Pathfinder cameras. Camera shots will help scientists determine which rocks to study with other instruments, and they will also help to spot signs of water erosion, if any.

Mini temperature spectrometer, sees the infrared radiation emitted by objects. The instrument can determine the mineral composition of the Martian surface from afar. It will help to select specific soil and stones for detailed research. Infrared vision allows you to see through the dust that covers the rocks. The instrument can detect the presence of carbonates, silicates, organic molecules and minerals formed in the presence of water. The infrared data will also help scientists determine the ability of rocks and soil to retain heat. In addition to studying rocks, the device can study the infrared radiation of the atmosphere.

These data will complement the materials obtained by the thermal spectrometer Mars Global Orbiter, currently in orbit around Mars.

Tools in the lever (see picture):

device microscopic- a combination of a microscope and a camera (the limit of visibility of the device is about one hundred microns). The imaging unit will help identify sedimentary rocks that formed in the water, and thus help scientists model Mars' past aquatic environment. This tool will also provide information about rocks formed by volcanic influence.

Since many of the most important minerals contain iron, the apparatus is equipped with a Mossbauer spectrometer designed to determine the iron content with high accuracy. The identification of iron in minerals will provide information on early Martian conditions. The spectrometer is also capable of studying the magnetic properties of surface materials and defining minerals formed in hot, watery environments that could preserve fossil evidence of Martian life. The power plant of the device is two radioactive sources containing cobalt-57, each of them the size of an ordinary pencil eraser.

The alpha particle X-ray spectrometer accurately determines the elements that make up rocks and soil. This information will help complement mineral analysis performed by other instruments.

A device for cleaning rocks is also installed on the lever of the apparatus. The instrument clears an area 4.5 cm in diameter and 5 mm deep. In addition, airborne dust collectors are installed on the devices. The dust will be examined by X-ray spectrometer. These devices are made in Denmark.

MarsExplorationRover is NASA's award-winning comprehensive exploration of the planet Mars. As part of this program, two rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, were delivered to the surface of the "red planet" almost simultaneously. In 2012, due to the failure of the Spirit apparatus and the setting of new scientific tasks, NASA delivers the new generation Curiosity rover to the surface of the planet, which is significantly larger and heavier than its predecessors.

First steps on the planet Mars: Spirit and Opportunity

The Spirit rover landed on the surface of Mars on January 3, 2004. Opportunity joined him on January 25 of the same year. As for the third world-famous Curiosity rover, it reached the surface of Mars on August 6, 2012, and immediately got to work.

It must be said that Spirit made a number of interesting discoveries. In particular, based on the results of samples of the Martian soil made by this apparatus, scientists were able to put forward a hypothesis that in the past there were excellent conditions for the life of microorganisms on Mars. Despite the fact that the mission of this rover was supposed to last 90 days, it was used for over six years. Contact with Spirit ended on July 23, 2010.

Opportunity arrived three weeks later than Spirit has been running so far. It should be noted that it was Opportunity who was able to find traces of an entire dry ocean on Mars. In addition, he owns very accurate measurements of various parameters of the Martian atmosphere.

Mars Exploration Curiosity

The Curiosity rover is not just a beautiful next-generation Martian rover, but also a fairly large autonomous chemical laboratory. The main task of using this apparatus is to conduct a number of deep studies of the soil and atmosphere. Now the rover is studying the geological history of the "red planet" in the Gale crater, where it is possible to work with deep soils.

The rover, which weighs 900 kg on Earth, 3 meters long and 2.7 meters wide, has 3 pairs of wheels with a diameter of 50 cm, is able to move in any direction and transmit data on soil samples, images from the planet's surface and other valuable information to Earth. The expected mission time is 1 Martian year, which is equal to 687 Earth days.

The first goal after landing, which NASA Curiosity successfully completed on August 6 this year in the Gale crater with a diameter of 150 km, was a trip to the foot of Mount Sharp. The mountain itself has a height of 5.5 km. The task is to study the version of the impact of water flows, which were once subjected to the slopes of Mount Sharp, but at the moment the rover at the landing site has found not as much water as expected by calculations, only 1.5%. But they assumed its presence from 5.6 to 6.5%.

The main results of Curiosity's work are that they determined the two-layer nature of the Martian soil. The first, the so-called dry layer, contains practically no water. At the same time, at a depth of more than 40 cm, the water content is about 4%.

And now, high-quality images from Mars, which were transmitted by the Curiosity rover, were obtained with the help of superimposed filters. One of the pictures shows the foot of Mount Sharp to which Curiosity follows.

Nevertheless, the first data of this chronicle from Mars have been received. The ambient temperature is +3 degrees Celsius and some interesting pictures, one of them clearly shows Mount Sharp, to which the rover is moving. True, he will reach it only by the new year on earth, because his speed is very low, only 0.14 km / h.

(Video of the surface of the planet Mars, transmitted by the Curiosity rover)

Before heading to the mountain, the NASA Curiosity rover checked all the equipment, took many pictures, moved the drill and tested the laser gun, the purpose of which is not to protect against Martians, but to collect soil and air samples from a distance.

At the moment, of the three rovers launched since 2003, two are working on Mars. During this time, many scientific discoveries of various scales have been made.

Leading world experts believe that the basis for the success of American rovers is the ability of their creators to learn from their own mistakes. Accordingly, each new device becomes more perfect than its predecessors.

Curious fact. Nasa employees provided the option of the first acquaintance with the "Martians". So after landing, the first thing the rover did was to greet the desert planet with the voice of NASA director Charles Bolden and sent the song Will.I.Am to earth.

On Tuesday, January 26, the US space agency announced that it was halting attempts to rescue the Spirit rover, which was stuck in the sands of the Red Planet. This decision means that he will forever remain where he is now. Many took the message from NASA as the news of the death of the rover. But the scientists themselves assure that everything is completely different and "Spirit" simply began a new stage in its mission. Recall what the rover managed to do in the six years since its landing.

All according to plan

The twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity set off for Mars in 2003. Before these two 185-kilogram colossus, the surface of our space neighbor had already been explored by the stationary Vikings in 1976 and the Sojourner rover in 1997. The ambitious Mars mission had several main objectives. The most important task was to find evidence in favor of the theory of the existence of water on Mars - in the past or present.

All the data accumulated by the time the rovers were launched indicated that there was no liquid water on the surface of Mars. However, a lot of indirect "evidence" was collected, indicating that the past of the Red Planet was wet. If there was water on Mars, it must have changed the composition of the rocks with which it interacted in a certain way. The Spirit and Opportunity toolkit allowed them to find such changes.

In addition, the rovers were supposed to study the mineral composition of the Red Planet, clarify what geological processes took place on it in the past, and also confirm (or not confirm) the observational data of orbiting probes.

Before sending Spirit and Opportunity on a journey of more than 55 million kilometers (this is the distance from Earth to Mars at the moments of their closest approach), scientists tested prototype rovers in the Arizona desert. Finally, on June 10, 2003, a Delta II launch vehicle with Spirit on board was launched from the Cape Canaveral launch site. Seven months later, the rover, "wrapped" in a cocoon of balloons, landed on the surface of Mars in the Gusev crater. This crater is a funnel with a diameter of about 170 kilometers, left after the fall of a huge meteorite on Mars. The researchers chose this place as the landing site, as they had good reason to believe that once upon a time the Gusev crater was filled with salt water.

In order to come up with the name of the devices, designated during development by the boring abbreviation MER (Mars Exploration Rover - a rover for exploring Mars), NASA organized a competition. It was won by 9-year-old girl Sophie Collis, who was born in Siberia.

Immediately upon arrival, "Spirit" transmitted to Earth photographs of the landscape surrounding it. The following days were not so successful. At first, scientists could not lower the device from the landing platform, and then Spirit had problems with memory, due to which the on-board computer of the rover constantly rebooted.

Finally bring "Spirit" to life was only on the fifth of February. The "recovered" rover immediately distinguished itself by drilling a hole 2.7 millimeters deep and 45.5 millimeters in diameter in the nearby Adirondack rock. By studying photographs of the hole, also taken by Spirit, the scientists were able to find out what the structure of the Adirondacks is.

A month later, the rover collected evidence that there really was water in the Gusev crater. Actually, this alone would be enough to call Spirit's mission a success. And since he received a lot more scientific data about the stones and craters surrounding him, the specialists decided to extend the duration of the mission beyond the originally planned 90 days. "Opportunity" worked no less successfully, so he extended his "contract".

Scientists are working with a model of the Spirit rover. Photo by NASA/JPL

Time passed, the Martian summer was replaced by the Martian winter, and both rovers continued to crawl on the surface of Mars and collect information. They transmitted gigabytes of scientific data and thousands of photographs to Earth. The devices completed all the points of the research program, including the discovery of a lot of evidence of the existence of water on Mars (a little later - in August 2008 - the Phoenix Martian probe succeeded from the soil of the Red Planet). The missions of both rovers have been extended several times. By January 29, 2010, Spirit had spent 2160 sols on Mars (Martian days - one sol is equal to 24 hours and 39 minutes), Opportunity - 2139 sols.

It was not, of course, without trouble. The most common problems for both rovers were memory failures and intermittent communication glitches. These minor afflictions did not have a very strong effect on the operation of the devices. The first serious problem was outlined on June 16, 2004 - the Spirit's right front wheel began to jam. Because of this injury, scientists were forced to adjust the movements of the rover. For example, on the hilly slopes "Spirit" climbed backwards. In March 2006, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) announced that the wheel had finally failed.

Catastrophe

Despite the lameness "Spirit" continued to regularly perform their duties. On one of the March days of 2009, he was calmly heading towards the Home Plate plateau. Suddenly, the crust of soil under the wheels of the rover cracked, and he fell into a sand trap. After analyzing the photographs taken by "Spirit" of his plight, the scientists concluded that there was a large stone under the bottom of the apparatus. To understand whether it touches the "belly" of the rover, scientists failed even after.

Astronomy and spacecraft are always of great interest to the public. In order for everyone to be able to follow the rescue of "Spirit" almost in real time, NASA opened a special site called Free Spirit ("free Spirit").

Even on Earth, getting a car stuck in the sand can be tricky. On Mars, when it is not completely clear how the apparatus got stuck and what the properties of the surrounding soil are, the task becomes extremely difficult. In order to work out the optimal tactics for saving Spirit and not completely bury it in the sand, scientists first worked out various options for actions on Earth. The experts used life-size models of the rover. The twins were placed in a container filled with sand, the properties of which (presumably) resembled those of the Martian soil.

In November 2009, scientists tried to implement their chosen techniques on Mars. They sent commands to Spirit to spin this or that wheel. Almost immediately it became clear that the reality is much more severe than expected. The rover refused to execute many commands, since the program embedded in its computer determined that the angle of inclination of the device after the operation would be too large. However, scientists have succeeded in the right direction. In the course of further attempts to rescue the rover, he got stuck in the ground even deeper than initially. Besides, .

New life

The idea to pull out "Spirit" looked more and more hopeless. In the end, the experts decided to abandon it. From now on, the rover will become a stationary station for the exploration of Mars. Scientists assure that even the "Spirit" immured in the sand will be able to make many more observations useful for science. In particular, it will be able to carefully study the characteristics of the surrounding soil and monitor the Martian weather.

Most of the notes on "Spirit" present him as a heroic little fighter who stubbornly overcomes all difficulties. But it may well be that he just wants to go home.

All these scientific accomplishments "Spirit" will implement next Martian spring. It is currently mid-autumn in the part of Mars where the rover is located. In winter, the Sun is very low above the horizon, in addition, it is additionally hidden by sand raised by storms. All of Spirit's instruments are powered by its solar panels, so the first thing scientists need to do is position the rover properly during hibernation. Now the batteries of the apparatus are tilted to the south, and the Sun will "hang" over the northern part of the sky. In the near future, experts will try to change the slope of the "Spirit" so that its batteries get at least a little energy.

It remains to be hoped that the efforts of scientists will be crowned with success and "Spirit" will meet the Martian winter prepared. Then it is possible that in the spring we will again hear about new discoveries made by the rover.

We look at the following apparatus that explored the "Mars" of the United States and are surprised:
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover

Artist's view of the MER rover on Mars
"Mars Exploration Rover (MER) is a NASA program to explore the planet Mars using two similar mobile, surface-moving spacecraft - rovers. The scientific director of the program is Steve Squires.
During the program, the second generation rovers MER-A Spirit (Spirit) and MER-B Opportunity (Opportunity) were successfully delivered to Mars. The descent vehicle with the Spirit rover made a soft landing on Mars on January 4, 2004 in the Gusev crater. (landing site coordinates 14.5718°S 175.4785°E). The lander carrying the Opportunity rover made a soft landing on Mars on January 25, 2004 on the Meridian Plateau. (landing site coordinates 1.95° S 354.47° E) With a base 90-day operating life of the rovers, Spirit worked for more than 6 years until 2011.

The MER rover compared to its predecessor Sojohner and humans

The design of this "miracle" USA:

NASA fairy tale: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover
"Design of devices.
The automatic interplanetary station of the MER project includes a landing module and a flight propulsion unit. For various stages of braking in the Martian atmosphere and landing, the lander is framed by two conical aerodynamic shields and has a parachute system, rocket engines and spherical airbags.
The rover has 6 wheels. The source of electricity is solar panels with a capacity of up to 140 watts. With a mass of 185 kg, the device is equipped with a drill, several cameras, a microscope and two spectrometers mounted on a manipulator.
The rotary mechanism of the rover is based on servo drives. Such drives are located on each of the front and rear wheels, the middle pair does not have such parts. The rotation of the front and rear wheels of the rover is carried out using electric motors that operate independently of the motors that ensure the movement of the vehicle.
When the rover needs to turn, the motors turn on and turn the wheels to the desired angle. All the rest of the time, the engines, on the contrary, prevent the turn, so that the device does not go astray due to accidental movement of the wheels. Switching of the modes turn-brake is made by means of the relay.
Also, the rover is able to dig the ground by rotating one of the front wheels, while remaining motionless. The on-board computer is based on a 20 MHz RAD6000 processor, 128 MB DRAM RAM, 3 MB EEPROM and 256 MB flash memory. The operating temperature of the robot is from minus 40 to plus 40 °C. For operation at low temperatures, a radioisotope heater is used, which can also be supplemented with electric heaters when necessary. Airgel and gold foil are used for thermal insulation.
Prototype MER rovers have been tested in Earth's deserts since 2002."

American liars sawed the US budget for adults, of course, under the leadership of the main leaders of the country, not without this:

AMC in assembly (Opportunity)

Lander airbags

The sky with excellent horizontal visibility of this "rover" appeared light pink:

Visibility is simply unique to the very horizon, no signs of dust, well, unless it is nano-dust in very small quantities, which is unlikely:

The pink sky is clearly not due to the dust in the atmosphere of "Mars", this is a photograph taken through a filter.

The following picture is a photograph, not an artist's work of art, and is a photograph taken on Earth:

Rover tracks on the Martian surface (Opportunity)

These landscapes will then be discovered by journalists:

A frame from the BBC TV show "The Sky at Night" Fig. 1

An enlarged fragment of a frame from the same video plot Fig. 2

An interesting study of these photos on the use of filters:
http://alternathistory.org.ua/paranoiya-ili-taki-da
"Surprise from the BBC"
At the beginning of July of this year, the BBC One TV channel of the British state television aired the next edition of the monthly program "Night Sky", dedicated to astronomy and space exploration. One of the most notable features of this program is that since the very first episode of Sky at Night, which aired on April 24, 1957, it has been consistently hosted by the same main host, Sir Patrick Moore. So it's no surprise that Night Sky holds the title of the longest-running TV show with the same host in television history. As for the July video of the story, which is now being discussed, it was a kind of anthem in honor of the automatic Mars Rover Spirit rover. It talked about the undeniably outstanding qualities and achievements of the NASA robot, which far exceeded the expectations of its designers regarding reliability and durability. Along the way, the audience was introduced to the new Curiosity rover, sent to Mars in the very near future.
The person present in the frame, who apparently told Moore about all these things, was for some reason presented in the announcements of the July program as “Dr. Chris North” (Dr. Chris North). However, in the subtitles of the video itself, he appears as Professor Steve Squyres from Cornell University. The second identification is guaranteed to be more accurate, since - unlike the unknown North - it is Squires who is well known as the scientist most closely associated with the daily operations of the twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity. But in this case, Squires himself is not so much interesting as two large monitors behind him, showing the landscape of Mars. A remarkable feature that cannot be overlooked is that the colors in this landscape do not correspond at all to those ominous reddish-brown hues that are usually characteristic of all color photographs of Martian landscapes published in the media.
It turns out that in the version of the images that the rover escort team is working with, the Martian sky looks quite earthly blue, and the color of the Martian soil turns out to be much more natural (by our, of course, earthly standards). In other words, whether the authors of the TV show wanted it or not, but thanks to their video filming, the long-standing debate about what the real color of Mars is and why for more than thirty years it has not been possible to get an answer to a seemingly simple , question.
How it started
The very first color photograph in the history of mankind, taken on the surface of Mars, was obtained in the summer of 1976 from the Viking Lander 1 descent module. And already on it, people saw the blue sky and the colors of the landscape, similar to those of the earth (photo on the left). But just hours later, NASA released an "updated" version of the same image (pictured right), which wowed the world with its orange skies and red soil.

The first image of the Mars rover Spirit __Fig. 4
Observant people immediately noticed the unusual appearance of the NASA logo applied to the platform of the delivery module. The usually deep blue color of the starry sky, which forms the background of the logo, looks like a dirty red spot in the image from Mars. And the frozen blue insulator foam surrounding the electric cables on the platform turned bright pink in the picture. It is clear that with such a distorted presentation of the well-known shades and colors of the landscape of a distant planet, the images from the Spirit cameras cannot be called natural.

In fact, it is well known that specifically for the correct adjustment of color balance, NASA scientists use the color calibration reference target available on the rovers, also known as the Sundial Target or "sundial". The essence of working with this target is quite simple - on the round dial there are four marks of basic reference colors, by tuning to which you can get the most natural colors in the picture.

The trouble is, every time these "sundial" hits the frame, it becomes quite obvious that the public is being fed incorrectly color-calibrated photographs of the Martian surface. Here is what a typical example of this looks like - a panorama of Mars widely replicated and composed of many images, made by the same Spirit rover and having a “clock” just in the center at the bottom. __Rice. 5

If we look at the enlarged image of the dial of this “clock” (on the right) and compare it with the reference image taken on Earth (on the left), it is easy to see what exactly the problem is. The blue color on Mars has turned to red, and the green has completely disappeared. What the green color in landscapes can mean, probably does not need to be explained ...

The blue color turns to red, but there is simply no green __Fig. 6
So what's the deal?
The clarifications of NASA officials about the constant complaints about inadequate color reproduction in images from Mars sound something like this. The root of the problem should be considered the features of the device of digital CCD-cameras (charge coupled device), used in the latest missions of both rover robots and satellite orbiters. Because all these cameras don't record color directly in the pictures they take. Instead, they shoot black and white photographs through many different filters, each of which only allows light to pass through a narrow range of wavelengths (or colors, otherwise), some of which are invisible to the eye. To get a "natural" color shot, cameras must take three separate photos of the same scene, each through different primary color filters: red, green, and blue. When all three parts are stacked on top of one another, they can provide a true color composite image. But even then, the colors will need to be balanced so that they most closely match what the eye normally sees. That is, one must also take into account the effects of dust, changes in light levels, and some other variables.
The cameras of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers have two "eyes", each of which is equipped with 8 color filters. At the same time, the left eye incorporates red, green, and blue color filters (they are required for natural color reproduction), and the right eye is focused entirely on the bands of the ultraviolet and infrared ranges invisible to the eye. Because of these features, in a sense, one can say that NASA's increased attention to the needs of the scientific community could stimulate the publication of miscolored images of Mars. Planetary geologists rely on ultraviolet and infrared data to better identify rocks and minerals. But this is the main scientific goal of the mission of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers! In other words, NASA explains, mission leaders try to use these filters as often as possible. But whenever they add wavelengths that are invisible to the eye into a composite image, it will inevitably produce an image with false colors in the output.
Thus, most of the red Martian images are the result of the use of filters with a band that lies beyond the range of human vision. The big problem with this official explanation is that nothing more than false color images of Mars seems to be presented to the public at all. But what does Mars really look like? Finding the answer to this question, experts say, requires decoding NASA's imaging systems, isolating the information from the red, green and blue filters, with the final color correction in accordance with the exact parameters of these filters. Fortunately, there are independent specialists in nature who are able to do all this quite professionally and in mass quantities upload more adequately processed NASA Martian images to the Web (much more similar, by the way, to the landscape from the monitor of Steve Squires from the BBC TV show)."
NASA's lie advocate's counterarguments are very funny:
http://geektimes.ru/post/160621/
"The peculiarity of obtaining color images through three filters caused another accusation from NASA that they post a lot of black and white images and very few color ones. Firstly, "few color" is nonsense, because even before Curiosity, thousands of color images were published shots of Spirit and Opportunity, and dozens of huge 360-degree panoramas.Second, by posting raw black-and-white footage taken through color filters, NASA gives everyone the opportunity to make their own color images of Mars.But conspiracy theorists master Photoshop only up to the Autocolor function, which they "restore the true color of Mars", and the intricacies of working with color channels are unknown to them.
This is something new, it turns out that everyone can choose the color of Mars USA to their liking. But the color is not important by and large, the main mistake of NASA was made, they showed the sky of their "Mars" Light, and then it doesn't matter if the color is pink or blue, everyone arrived, the color of the Martian sky on real Mars is dark, black.
The following counterargument is even funnier:
http://geektimes.ru/post/160621/
“The next argument of the adherents of the “Mars-red” doctrine is a BBC report about the work of NASA specialists. According to the plot of the program, the scientist is sitting at a working laptop, then journalists enter his office and ask something.
But the conspiracy theorist yells "Aha!" and pokes at the monitors behind the scientist, and there is not red Mars and blue sky. At the same time, an organization of conspirators on a global scale looks more than strange, where journalists with cameras calmly walk around the offices, looking where they like. But those who dream of catching NASA in a lie do not think about it.
So what's on that monitor? It shows the Cape Verde section of Victoria Crater that Opportunity explored.
NASA scientists are using processing under terrestrial lighting conditions to make it easier to identify rock types encountered by rovers. Since the eyes of geologists are accustomed to terrestrial conditions, the color gamut of Martian images is also changed in the same direction. And these photos are not secret at all.
It is very original to change the real color of stones in Photoshop to make it easier to determine the types of stones. These NASA defenders are not only stupid, they are also funny, how they come up with something, so at least stand, at least fall!
The main thing was not to show earthly landscapes on Mars:

And earthly tornadoes:

The error is the same everywhere and the most stupid - it is a bright "Martian" sky with good visibility of distant objects, fairy tales about dust do not work: