Mars 360-degree panoramic view from Curiosity • Hacker News Board

Re: Mars 360-degree panoramic view from Curiosity

#101

Post by jonhendry » Fri, Aug 10, 2012, 8:01 PM UTC

arrrg wrote: post #61

ricardobeat wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Repost from another thread: These are still from the navigation cameras. The main camera, not yet deployed, can take 1600x1200 full-color pictures and HD video at 10fps. There's actually two of it, so it can also make 3D images/video. Other features are wide/telephoto lens, panorama stitching and 8GB flash storage. Before complaining about resolution, this is like having a GoPro 3D on Mars, it has plenty of detail. O…

3D images are not possible since the two cameras have two different (fixed) focal lengths (for wide and tele shots). There were plans to add zoom lenses (which would make 3D images possible) but they couldn’t make it happen (mostly because of technical issues, it seems). (Hm, well actually, technically 3D images are possible, just not because there are two cameras. Since rocks tend to not move, Curiosity could just s…

They've actually posted a few anaglyph 3D images. Perhaps they manipulate the images to approximate the same focal length (cropping, maybe).

Ah - they used the hazard avoidance cameras: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA16002

Re: Mars 360-degree panoramic view from Curiosity

#102

Post by vlad » Fri, Aug 10, 2012, 8:13 PM UTC

vlad wrote: post #31

A quick take on the project. Software Architect: "Hello sir! As you know, it has taken millions to billions of dollars and years of time to develop your project. We are ready to launch! As you know, it will take a year to actually deploy it in production, during which point a bug or misconfiguration of the software during the transfer, installation, or activation stages would cause it to fail. If a failure happens, w…

Hacker News went offline before I could finish editing the introductory sentence. The point was that a software project with the same time and cost requirements would also have interesting constraints: once it's launched, it can't be patched, and has to run for ten years. Would you as a manager really risk a failure?

Don't forget that the software can fail at any time during the year it takes for the software to install, too. Any failure before installation or after would require the project to be rebuilt for millions of dollars and months of delays.

Given that receiving a confirmation that your input was accepted already takes hours, and that returning output as textual data will serve the project's purpose for the next ten years, then the company should probably not delay the launch of the project even further just to be able to return .BMP screen shots of the text files, just to impress the media with how much raw data was found.

Re: Mars 360-degree panoramic view from Curiosity

#103

Post by vlad » Fri, Aug 10, 2012, 8:26 PM UTC

Sharlin wrote: post #48

vlad wrote: post #31

A quick take on the project. Software Architect: "Hello sir! As you know, it has taken millions to billions of dollars and years of time to develop your project. We are ready to launch! As you know, it will take a year to actually deploy it in production, during which point a bug or misconfiguration of the software during the transfer, installation, or activation stages would cause it to fail. If a failure happens, w…

What's the relevance of this? Since they're bandwith limited, using a more inefficient compression scheme wouldn't gain them any extra transmitted bytes, only less actual data.

My point was that delaying an expensive and years-long software project that's already prone to failure, just to replace a perfectly adequate feature with another whose only benefit is to impress the media, would probably be considered stupid. In my example, it would be to receive images as BMP files just to be able to brag to the media how much data was received. (Maybe I shouldn't have used images in my example software project since it confused people, but I blame Hacker News for going offline before I could make improvements.)

Re: Mars 360-degree panoramic view from Curiosity

#104

Post by vlad » Fri, Aug 10, 2012, 8:27 PM UTC

InclinedPlane wrote: post #50

vlad wrote: post #31

A quick take on the project. Software Architect: "Hello sir! As you know, it has taken millions to billions of dollars and years of time to develop your project. We are ready to launch! As you know, it will take a year to actually deploy it in production, during which point a bug or misconfiguration of the software during the transfer, installation, or activation stages would cause it to fail. If a failure happens, w…

You are clueless, NASA uses lossless and lossy compression on its image data.

I posted an update: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4368013

Re: Mars 360-degree panoramic view from Curiosity

#105

Post by vlad » Fri, Aug 10, 2012, 8:27 PM UTC

raldi wrote: post #41

vlad wrote: post #31

A quick take on the project. Software Architect: "Hello sir! As you know, it has taken millions to billions of dollars and years of time to develop your project. We are ready to launch! As you know, it will take a year to actually deploy it in production, during which point a bug or misconfiguration of the software during the transfer, installation, or activation stages would cause it to fail. If a failure happens, w…

Is that BMP thing based on something that actually happened?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4368013

Re: Mars 360-degree panoramic view from Curiosity

#106

Post by wlievens » Sat, Aug 11, 2012, 7:01 AM UTC

EternalFury wrote: post #99

wlievens wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let's reformulate the question: Why not keep the same enclosure, the same lens assembly, the same mechanical parts and simply swap the 2MP sensor for a 20MP sensor? You do know that a 20MP sensor is significantly (~10 times) larger than a 2MP sensor, right? So the mechanics would probably simply not fit.

Huh, no, not at all. The last 10 years have been spent increasing photosite density. Today's sensors can have 10-20 times the resolution, and be the same physical size or smaller. Today's sensors are also more reliable, less sensitive to dust and noise than sensors made 10 years ago.

Sure it is, when we're talking about the same sensor and pixel design, which is implied when you say "simply swap the sensor". Otherwise it's a completely different camera setup.

Also, while obviously technology has improved, the industry doesn't necessarily move towards smaller pixels as a rule. To illustrate that: I work for a company that designs and produces image sensors, and I can tell you that we have one sensor product that has a resolution of just over one megapixel, but it's larger in area than our seventy megapixel product.

It all depends on the specifics of the project, and I can imagine that operating in space has certain constraints that prohibit just swapping in another sensor. These camera's are scientific instruments, and that means different rules apply.