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Indian Mars Mission Beams Back Photographs of Mars


Levelord

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Good for them. For some reason, such photos are extremely rare, and damn it, it's really not that hard to take a photo once you're there.

Only MOM has a high enough apoapsis to take full-planet pictures with a camera that still has good enough ground resolution at apoapsis for useful science. The only other images you'll find are from Hubble and Mars Express' VMC (a wide-angle low-res engineering camera).

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Only MOM has a high enough apoapsis to take full-planet pictures with a camera that still has good enough ground resolution at apoapsis for useful science. The only other images you'll find are from Hubble and Mars Express' VMC (a wide-angle low-res engineering camera).

And all the other tons of probes we've ever sent there couldn't take a single photo while they were approaching it? Not even one? Or it's perhaps that argument that the probe is there to do science, and not taking cool photos? Because sometimes that's true, but not always.

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Actually, although the framing is breathtaking, I've been a bit underwhelmed by the quality of the pictures released until now. They are very noisy, low resolution, and blurry... It does look like they stuck a pretty low-end camera on it, which is a bit disappointing.

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Actually, although the framing is breathtaking, I've been a bit underwhelmed by the quality of the pictures released until now. They are very noisy, low resolution, and blurry... It does look like they stuck a pretty low-end camera on it, which is a bit disappointing.

From what I understand it's a common problem with all spacecraft capable of taking pictures and most NASA photos that you see are often digitally enhanced before being released to the public. The case with India's photo is that they haven't bothered digitally enhancing it and published the raw image.

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about it (it's related to the intense solar radiation interfering with the camera equipment; and this is just from low Earth orbit.):

Streaks of light occur when energetic protons strike the sensitive optical electronics in spacecraft (such as star trackers and other cameras). The effect can be so pronounced that during extreme events, it is not possible to obtain quality images of the Sun or stars. This can cause spacecraft to lose their orientation, which is critical if ground controllers are to maintain control.
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And all the other tons of probes we've ever sent there couldn't take a single photo while they were approaching it? Not even one? Or it's perhaps that argument that the probe is there to do science, and not taking cool photos? Because sometimes that's true, but not always.

You can do science with a camera can't you?

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Funny how the comments ooze a disdain for India and Indian technology. I am fairly sure that if they managed to build a craft that successfully reached Mars, something that has proven to be exceptionally hard, they were also capable of at least shopping for a decent camera - if not developing it themselves.

Edited by Camacha
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You can do science with a camera can't you?

Probes use special cameras. The images are taken through special filters. For example UV, green, orange, and then a computer on Earth processes it to look as close as it would be to what a human eye sees in those conditions. Almost none of the space photos you ever saw, being planetary bodies or nebulas, were made using classical approach. A lot of them aren't even processed to appear naturally. For example, Venus is a featureless blob of bright and bit creamy color, Enceladus doesn't have blue stripes, Mercury isn't perfectly gray, etc.

But that doesn't matter what kind of cameras they use. People behind the missions sometimes forget it's the public that feeds them money. ESA tried to follow the same dumbass approach with 67P, so people got angry and protest e-mails started pouring in. Result - now they release images almost on a daily basis.

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