14 DAY TRIAL // The American space agency has recently announced the publication of a new web tool, called HiWish, that is meant to allow the general public a chance of having their favored Martian destinations photographed. Anyone can submit a possible Martian location that they believe could be of interest, and the team managing the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft, in orbit around the Red Planet, will analyze the suggestion, and decide whether to incorporate it into the operation stage of the mission or not. There are, however, a few conditions that need to be met in order for your suggestion to be taken into consideration, Space reports.
All the suggested and selected data sets will be snapped by MRO's workhorse imager and camera, the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE). Over the years, as the orbiter spun around the Red Planet, this instrument has been in charge of snapping some of the most amazing images of Mars ever taken. Single-handedly, and largely because of HiRISE, the MRO mission has returned more data on its target planet than all other Martian missions combined, including the surface rovers, landers and other orbiters. The inception of the HiWish program is simply an attempt to get more people interested in space exploration, and in Mars.
“The process is fairly simple. With the tool, you can place your rectangle on Mars where you'd like,” University of Arizona expert Guy McArthur explains. The HiRISE system programmer worked together with colleagues from the space agency's Ames Research Center, in Moffett Field, California, and the SETI Institute for developing the HiWish web interface and tools. Engineers in charge of managing the MRO say that the new initiative was launched less than a month after the orbiter was revived from a long slumber. Following a computer glitch, it entered safe-mode for a while, as scientists did not want to risk any damage coming to it.
With control over the spacecraft's computers now established at full capacity, the HiRISE is ready to snap new, highly detailed photos of Mars that it will add to the already-massive, 13,000-picture collection that it has produced thus far. In spite of this massive number, it is estimated at NASA that the machine only managed to cover about one percent of Mars' surface with its investigations. “The HiRISE team is pleased to give the public this opportunity to propose imaging targets and share the excitement of seeing your favorite spot on Mars at people-scale resolution,” UA HiRISE principal investigator Alfred McEwen explains.
The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, in Washington DC. Denver, Colorado-based Lockheed Martin Space Systems built the spacecraft. The JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), in Pasadena. Launched in 2006, the MRO has been surveying the Red Planet with its six instruments ever since. However, glitches continuously occurred over the duration of the mission, with a record-setting four taking place in 2009 alone, in February, June and August. In most of these instances, engineers are not yet exactly sure why the errors appeared.