New Images Reveal Clear, Bright Features Of Martian Face
The face of Mars is visible in "unprecedented detail" due to a revolutionary "imaging stacking and matching technique." They even show the actual location of Beagle 2 and may give researchers more details about Martian history.
Most of the details on various planets cannot be viewed through the telescopes that are launched into orbit, mainly due to mass constraints for telescope optics, and the communication bandwidth required to pull high-resolution images back to the earth.
Still, without equipment, researchers stacked and matched pictures of the same area shot from various angles. These are the Super-Resolution Restoration (SSR) images that display objects as tiny as 2 inches from space. The images can be captured from Mars through 10 years and then still achieve high resolution, as the surface alters very little.
"We now have the equivalent of drone-eye vision anywhere on the surface of Mars where there are enough clear repeated pictures," said Jan-Meter Muller from the UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory. "It allows us to see objects in much sharper focus from orbit than ever before and the picture quality is comparable to that obtained from landers. As more pictures are collected, we will see increasing evidence of the kind we have only seen from the three successful rover missions to date. This will be a game-changer and the start of a new era in planetary exploration."
Hence, the new images show a resolution of up to five times more than the earlier ones. They show ancient lake beds and even the Beagle 2 lander.
"Using novel machine vision methods, information from lower resolution images can be extracted to estimate the best possible true scene," said Yu Tao of UCL and lead author. "This technique has huge potential to improve our knowledge of a planet's surface from multiple remotely sensed images. In the future, we will be able to recreate rover-scale images anywhere on the surface of Mars and other planets from repeat image stacks."
The findings were published in the February edition of the journal Planetary and Space Science.
