MRO's HiRISE Camera Turned On

CAMERA'S TRIP TO MARS IS NO LEISURE CRUISE FOR HiRISE TEAM
From Lori Stiles, University Communications, UA, 520-621-1877
September 07, 2005

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Contact information listed below
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The High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera is
rocketing
toward Mars, and it's no leisure cruise for the camera operations team
at
The University of Arizona campus in Tucson either. The team turned the
HiRISE camera on Friday (Sept. 2).

NASA launched the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and its science
payload, which includes the HiRISE camera, on Aug. 12. HiRISE -- the
largest
telescopic camera sent beyond Earth's orbit -- and five other MRO
instruments will inspect the red planet in unprecedented detail and
assist
future landers. The spacecraft will travel more than four times the
distance
to Mars before entering Mars' orbit on March 10, 2006.

For the next year, the HiRISE team in Tucson will train new members
joining
the project, write volumes of new software, image celestial objects to
check
how their camera operates post-launch, and practice as if their camera
already were in orbit. UA Professor Alfred S. McEwen leads HiRISE.

"We're very excited, and we're working very hard," said Eric Eliason,
who
manages the HiRISE Operations Center (HiROC) at the UA's Lunar and
Planetary
Laboratory.

Eliason and the rest of the HiROC team is responsible for most of the
ground data system work for the HiRISE camera. Observation planning,
uplink,
downlink, instrument monitoring, and data processing and analysis will
all
be done at HiROC, which is located in the UA's C.P. Sonett Space
Sciences
Building.

"We'll get our first images tomorrow (Sept. 8) as the spacecraft slews
our
camera over the moon and then over Omega Centauri," Eliason said. "The
spacecraft is flying so fast that the moon will already look very small
-
fewer than 200 pixels across. But we think we're going to get some
really
pretty pictures of Omega Centauri. And we'll know very quickly how well
our
instrument is working."

Plans are for HiRISE to make other sets of star observations on Oct. 4
- 5,
Nov. 5 and Dec. 13 - 14. The October images will show very precisely
how MRO
navigation cameras are aligned with HiRISE. The November images will
help
the HiRISE team fine-tune their camera's focus to get the sharpest
images
possible. The December images will show how vibrations from different
spacecraft instruments may affect HiRISE images.

"These observations will also help us to characterize the optical
distortion of our lens, and what processing methods we'll need to
correct
for whatever distortion we see," Eliason said.

The 145-pound (65 kg) HiRISE camera features a 20-inch (half-meter)
primary
mirror. Developed by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Co.,
the
$40 million HiRISE camera will take ultra-sharp photographs over
3.5-mile (6
kilometer) swaths of the martian landscape, resolving rocks and other
geologic features as small as 40 inches (one meter) across. It will
take
pictures in stereo and color while it flies at more than 7,800 mph (3
and
1/2 km per second) about 190 miles (300 km) above Mars' surface.

After entering Mars's orbit in March 2006, the MRO will gradually
adjust
its elliptical orbit to a circular orbit by aerobraking, a technique
that
creates drag using the friction of careful dips into the planet's upper
atmosphere. The spacecraft's 25-month primary science phase begins in
November 2006.

The HiROC team expects to process 1,000 gigantic high-resolution images
and
9,000 smaller high-resolution images during the science phase of the
MRO
mission.

The MRO mission is managed by JPL, a division of the California
Institute
of Technology, Pasadena, for the NASA Science Mission Directorate.
Lockheed
Martin Space Systems, Denver, prime contractor for the project, built
the
spacecraft.

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Contact Information
Eric Eliason 520-626-0764
Alfred S. McEwen 520-621-4573

Related Web sites
http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/HiRISE/
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/