Map context for Curiosity images

Curiosity has taken over 30,000 images so far in its first four months on Mars. The rover has covered about 700 meters of terrain to date and it can be a challenge to figure out just where a given image was taken from in Gale Crater. The official NASA raw images website doesn’t provide information on where the images were taken or what in direction the camera was pointing.

Luckily, such information is available, albeit with the help of some tricky software, from the NASA Navigation and Ancillary Information Facility (NAIF). NAIF data files for MSL are updated roughly once a day in an unofficial directory on theNAIF website. I updated the raw image browser at CuriosityMSL.com to have a “map it” link next to each image that gives a side-by-side view of a given image next to a map of the camera context:

 

 

link

 

A red wedge from the camera position on the map shows the approximate field of view for the given camera. The map can be panned/zoomed. The highest resolution is 4 meters per pixel from the MRO HiRISE camera. Zooming out eventually brings in the MRO CTX camera and Google Mars imagery at lower resolutions.

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Any doubt as to why?

TIME.com: TIME Magazine — February 13, 2006 Vol. 167 No. 7

It starts from the top:

White House pressures NASA to accommodate creationism

NASA Chief Backs Agency Openness – New York Times

choice quote:

The Big Bang memo came from Mr. Deutsch, a 24-year-old presidential appointee in the press office at NASA headquarters whose résumé says he was an intern in the “war room” of the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign. A 2003 journalism graduate of Texas A&M, he was also the public-affairs officer who sought more control over Dr. Hansen’s public statements.

In October 2005, Mr. Deutsch sent an e-mail message to Flint Wild, a NASA contractor working on a set of Web presentations about Einstein for middle-school students. The message said the word “theory” needed to be added after every mention of the Big Bang.

The Big Bang is “not proven fact; it is opinion,” Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, “It is not NASA’s place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator.”

It continued: “This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA. That would mean we had failed to properly educate the very people who rely on us for factual information the most.”

Waspy orchid

Waspy orchid

Originally uploaded by jmknapp.

Franklin Park Conservatory, Columbus, Ohio, Feb. 5, 2006

Titan and Enceladus

MAKE: technology/hacking magazine from O’Reilly

 

MakeZine.com:

Super daisy

Super daisy

Originally uploaded by jmknapp.

Franklin Park Conservatory, Columbus, Ohio, Feb. 5, 2006