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Curiosity’s Science Cameras

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The Design and Engineering of Curiosity

Part of the book series: Springer Praxis Books ((SPACEE))

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Abstract

Curiosity has five science cameras. The color Mastcams view the rover’s world in color at two different resolutions. The Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI, pronounced “Molly”) on the turret at the end of the arm, is a wide-angle color camera that can be held close to a target or perform distance imaging. The Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) is fixed to the rover body, pointing down, with a view of the surface as it passes under the rover. Together, these three instruments are often referred to as the “MMM” cameras. They have common detector and electronics and software design and differ only in their optics. Finally, there is the laser-equipped ChemCam, which measures elemental compositions of nearby rocks and also possesses the camera with the highest angular resolution on the rover, the Remote Micro-Imager (RMI). It will be described in Chapter 9 with the other composition analysis instruments.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Prior to landing, there was no peer-reviewed paper describing Mastcam or MARDI. Mastcam was described in two Lunar and Planetary Science Conference abstracts: Malin et al. (2010) and Bell et al. (2012). Also useful is Alexander and Deen (2015). Two peer-reviewed articles were in preparation as this book was being written: Bell et al. (2017) and Malin et al. (2017). Because Mastcam shares its electronics, detector, and focal mechanism design with MAHLI, the Edgett et al. (2012) MAHLI paper is also informative.

  2. 2.

    Michael Malin, personal communication, email dated April 14, 2017

  3. 3.

    Bell et al. (2017)

  4. 4.

    Onboard interpolation uses the Malvar-He-Cutler linear interpolation algorithm

  5. 5.

    Bell et al. (2017)

  6. 6.

    Michael Malin, personal communication, email dated April 14, 2017

  7. 7.

    Kinch K et al (2013) Dust on the Curiosity mast camera calibration target. Paper presented at the 44th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, The Woodlands, Texas, March 18-22, 2013

  8. 8.

    Mark Lemmon, personal communication, email dated June 15, 2017

  9. 9.

    The MARDI instrument is described in Malin et al. (2009) and Malin et al. (2017)

  10. 10.

    Schieber et al. (2013)

  11. 11.

    Garvin et al. (2014)

  12. 12.

    Garvin et al. (2015)

  13. 13.

    Minitti et al. (2015)

  14. 14.

    The paper of record for MAHLI is Edgett et al. (2012); two other valuable resources are Edgett et al. (2015) and Yingst et al. (2016)

  15. 15.

    Ghaemi (2009)

  16. 16.

    The MAHLI Principal Investigator’s Notebooks are available for download from Ken Edgett’s page on Researchgate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ken_Edgett/publications

  17. 17.

    Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Software Interface Specification for Camera & LIBS Experiment Data Record (EDR) and Reduced Data Record (RDR) Data Products version 3.5, August 5, 2014

  18. 18.

    Yingst R A et al (2014) Cameras on Landed Payload Robotic Arms – MAHLI and Mars and Lessons Learned from One Mars Year of Operations. Paper presented to the International Workshop on Instrumentation for Planetary Missions (IPM-2014), 4-7 Nov 2014

  19. 19.

    Ashwin Vasavada, interview dated March 10, 2017, and Ken Edgett, email dated April 10, 2017

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Planetary Society, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Emily Lakdawalla

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  1. Emily Lakdawalla
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Lakdawalla, E. (2018). Curiosity’s Science Cameras. In: The Design and Engineering of Curiosity. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68146-7_7

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