SUBJECT: MARS OBSERVER CAMERA PRIN FILE: UFO1596 Msg # : 1249 PARANET conference From: ANSON KENNEDY Sent: 08-27-93 19:43 To: ALL Rcvd: NO Topic: THE ABOVE.... The following is the first of three articles posted on USENET's sci.space newsgroup by the Mars Observer Camera Principal Investigator, Mike Malin. In them, he addresses the criticisms Richard Hoagland has raised about the mission. If anyone saw Hoagland on CNN's Larry King Live Show last Wednesday, this is the message he quoted on the air (from the last paragraph to be precise). --- Anson Newsgroups: sci.space Path: netcom.com!netcomsv!decwrl!uunet! cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!ennews!ennews.eas.asu.edu!malin From: malin@esther.la.asu.edu (Mike Malin) Subject: MOC PI Comments: Face on Mars (Long) Message-ID: Sender: news@ennews.eas.asu.edu (USENET News System) Organization: Mars Observer TES Project, ASU, Tempe AZ Date: Sat, 21 Aug 1993 19:19:09 GMT Lines: 194 This posting is from Mike Malin, Principal Investigator of the Mars Observer Camera, in response to the net discussions that have been going on during the past two weeks. Please do not respond to the e-mail address above. My only link to the network is through this third party and I don't want them deluged with replies. I do read the net occassionally and will try to respond when time and interest permit. Topic: Observations of the "Face on Mars" and other such "Things" by the Mars Observer Camera There have been a lot of questions about whether or not the Mars Observer Camera (MOC) will observe the "Face on Mars" or other features in the Cydonia region on Mars. This note will (try) to describe what we are going to do and why. BACKGROUND For those of you not familiar with the topic, several Viking images show features on the surface of Mars that, in the eyes of some people, resemble "faces," "pyramids," and other such "artifacts." The most famous of these is the "Face on Mars" and associated features "The City," "The Fortress," "The Cliff," "The Tholus," and "The D&M Pyramid." A fairly substantial "cottage" industry has sprung up around these features, with several books having been written about them, newsletters published, public presentations, press conferences, and, of course, National Enquirer and other "tabloid" published reports. The basic premise of these people is that the features are artificial, and are messages to us from alien beings. Their tack is to say, "These should be rephotographed by Mars Observer, since with high resolution we should be able to PROVE that these are artificial. If these are in fact artificial, this would rank as one of the greatest discoveries in history and thus every effort should be made to acquire images." Evidence cited as presently "proving" these are unnatural landforms include measurements of angles and distances that define "precise" mathematical relationships. One of the most popular is that "The D&M Pyramid" is located at 40.868 degrees North Latitude, relative to the control network established by Merton Davies (the RAND scientist who has been more or less singularly responsible for establishing the longitude/latitude grids on the planets) to an accuracy (actually, a precision) of order 0.017 degrees. They point out that 40.868 equals arctan (e / pi); alternatively, one of the advocates notes that the ratio of the surface area of a tetrahedron to its circuscribing sphere is 2.72069 (e = 2.71828), which, if substituted for e in the above arctan equation gives 40.893 degrees, which is both within the physical perimeter of the "Pyramid" and within the above stated precision. Other mathematical relationships abound. The advocates of this view argue that "no scientific study of these features has been conducted under NASA auspices" and that NASA and the conservative science community are conspiring to keep the "real" story from the American public. The conventional view is that this is all nonsense. The Cydonia region lies on the boundary between ancient upland topography and low-lying plains, with the isolated hills representing remnants of the uplands that once covered the low-lying area. The features seen in these mesas and buttes (to bring terrestrial terminology from the desert southwest to bear on the problem) result from differential weathering and erosion of layers within the rock materials. The area is of considerable importance to geologists because it does provide insight into the sub-surface of Mars, and to its surface processes. The measurement of angles and distances seems so much numerology, especially when one understands the actual limitations in the control network (of order 5-10 km, or 0.1-0.2 degrees) and the imprecision of our corrections of the images (neglecting, for example, topography when reprojecting data for maps) on which people are trying to measure precise angles and distances. Even given accurate data, however, most science does not depend solely on planimetric measurements, even when using photographs. There are many other attributes used to examine features that don't work for these things. No one in the planetary science community (at least to my knowledge) would waste their time doing "a scientific study" of the nature advocated by the proponents of the "Face on Mars is Artifical" perspective. To provide you with an idea of the magnitude of this issue, consider that I spend roughly a quarter of my time these days trying to prepare thoughtful answers to (often abusive) letters from people who analyse every word in every sentence in every paragraph in every letter I have written on the subject (they send copies of my letters to each other and exerpt them in their newsletters). They see innuendo and hidden meaning everywhere. I also have it on first-hand authority that at least 2 NASA Headquarters managers spend similar amounts of time responding to letters sent over from Congressmen whose constituents write about "The Face" and to which NASA is obligated to respond. THINGS LIMITING MARS OBSERVER CAMERA OBSERVATIONS Before I discuss the observations MOC will make of "The Face on Mars," some facts about the camera and its ability to look at specific locations are needed. 0. The MOC is body fixed to the spacecraft. It has no independent pointing capability. It makes pictures the same way a fax machine does (i.e., the scene is moved past the single line detector). 1. Cross-track Field of View - The MOC has a very small field of view (0.44 degrees), which is about 3 km from the 400 km orbital altitude. It typically takes very small images at very high resolution (lots of data). Anything wider than 3 km cannot be imaged in its entirety. 2. Along-track Field of View - The MOC's downtrack field of view is limited by the amount of data that will fit in its buffer (about 10 MB). If one uses the entire buffer (which is not likely to be completely empty unless its planned to be) and 2:1 realtime predictive compression, this translates to a downtrack image length of about 15 km. We've designed the camera to be able to average pixels together to synthesize poorer resolution, which frees up data. Under the best case buffer availability, an 8X summed image would be 3 km wide (but only 256 pixels across) by 40960 pixels long which, at 12 m/pxl (8 X 1.5) would be almost 500 km long. 3. Pointing Control Instability - The spacecraft uses IR horizon sensors for in-orbit pointing control. Owing to variations in the IR flux of the horizon with latitude, season, surface topography, atmospheric dust content, cloudiness, and other meteorological and climatological conditions, the control capability is about 10 mrad (0.6 degrees = 4 km), which is larger than the MOC field of view. 4. Spacecraft Position Uncertainty - The position of the spacecraft is determined by radio tracking for 8 hours (roughly 4.5 hours of actually seeing the spacecraft) a day, and by computing the position of the Earth, Mars, and the spacecraft in an inertial coordinate system. It takes a few days to do this, and to use it to determine where the spacecraft will be a few days later. By that time, gravity perturbations, atmospheric drag, and autonomous momentum unloadings will have changed the orbit. Error studies suggest that the uncertainty seven days after the end of a given orbit can be represented as a 40 second uncertainty in the time the spacecraft will be at a specific point in its orbit. This translates (at the orbital rate of the spacecraft projected on the ground of 3 km/s) to 120 km downtrack and (because Mars rotates at 0.24 km/s at the equator) 9.6 km crosstrack. At 40 degrees latitude, the crosstrack uncertainty is 7.4 km. 5. Non-inertial Position Uncertainty - The position of the spacecraft is determined inertially. As noted above, the position of the longitude/latitude grid is also uncertain to about 5-10 km. 6. Orbit Spacing - If, in spite of the preceding, orbits were equally spaced, then the average spacing of orbits at the equator for the 687 day mission would be about 2.5 km, which means that each spot on the equator will fall within the MOC field of view in (possibly) two images. In fact, the repeat distance is just over 3.1 km, again assuming equal spacing, and it is more than likely that each spot on the equator will only be seen once. At 40 degrees latitude, the spacing is roughly 2.4 km, and any location will be seen, at most, twice. Given Items 1-5, it is most likely that some places will be overflown twice, and others not at all, and that our ability to predict this is very limited. We are attempting to address some of these issues with, for example, optical navigation. This could reduce the spacecraft position uncertainty by perhaps a factor of five or more. We will try to create a new control grid with higher precision (perhaps as good as 1 km). But we cannot do anything about the orbit spacing or the pointing control or the width of the MOC field of view. Thus, hitting anything as small as a specific 3 km piece of the planet is going to be very difficult. And what about the fact that Mars has a very dynamic atmosphere? The one orbit we fly over something of interest, it may be cloudy, or dusty. SO, WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO Despite providing a number of people involved with the "private" studies of the "Face of Mars" with exactly the same information I've just noted, they continue to think I am purposefully avoiding taking the picture they want. They are very concerned that the MOC is being run by a company and that I will try to ransom or profit from the "important" data (as if they are not). And talk of conspiracy is everywhere. But it isn't the case: if we get a picture of "The Face," we will most definitely release it. "The Face on Mars," "The City," "The Fortress," "The Cliff," "The Tholus," "The D&M Pyramid," etc. are in our target database (now they want detailed copies of that binary data base!). We will try to get pictures (its almost impossible not to try to take the pictures, since the data base and initial targeting effort is fully automatic). Of course, given the factors noted above, I'd be stupid to tell people we were definitely, without doubt, and postively without uncertainty going to get a picture of any of these things. For one thing, they would then cry that I was hiding the picture if in fact we never got one. So my approach has been not to promise anything, which of course gets me in trouble, too. BOTTOM LINE: We will try. We more than likely will not succeed. There is no conspiracy. We are not ignoring the problem (just the people, who are making a real nuisance of themselves). --- * Origin: MICAP Georgia State Chapter & Georgia Skeptics (9:1012/25.0) Msg # : 1252 PARANET conference From: ANSON KENNEDY Sent: 08-27-93 19:45 To: ALL Rcvd: NO Topic: MARS OBSERVER CAMERA PRIN This is the second article by Mars Observer Camera Principal Investigator Mike Malin. --- Anson Newsgroups: sci.space Path: netcom.com!netcomsv!apple.com!oli vea!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net !gatech!asuvax!ennews!ennews.eas.asu.edu!malin From: malin@esther.la.asu.edu (Mike Malin) Subject: MOC PI Comments: Proprietary Rights to Images (Long) Message-ID: Sender: news@ennews.eas.asu.edu (USENET News System) Organization: Mars Observer TES Project, ASU, Tempe AZ Date: Sat, 21 Aug 1993 19:20:08 GMT Lines: 130 This posting is from Mike Malin, Principal Investigator of the Mars Observer Camera, in response to the net discussions that have been going on during the past two weeks. Please do not respond to the e-mail address above. My only link to the network is through this third party and I don't want them deluged with replies. I do read the net occassionally and will try to respond when time and interest permit. Topic: Proprietary Rights to Mars Observer Camera images The first thing you must recognize is the difference between a facility instrument and a Principal Investigator instrument. With the former, NASA or its designated field center (JPL in the case of planetary missions) contracts to buy the instrument, either from industry or from within its own facilities. In the latter case, NASA contracts with an individual (actually, his institution) for an investigation (more on this in a moment). Since Mariner 6 & 7 in 1969, all planetary S/C cameras have been facility instruments built by JPL to specifications developed interactively with a group of scientists (a facility team) who proposed separately to conduct specific science tasks. Generally, these scientists had very little knowledge or interest in the hardware, and were more than content to let the engineers at JPL decide what capabilities were to be incorporated. The scientists were guaranteed "first rights" to the data in return for devoting much of their "discretionary" research time (i.e., time not supported by teaching or other institutional duties) to the project. Most of my colleagues spend between 3 and 5 times as much time on their flight project commitments as they are paid for, including considerable travel time. The ancillary advantages of flight project participation (computing hardware, augmented staff support, prestige) are less compensation than perquisites (i.e., they result in "nice" improvements in one's ability to conduct research, but usually not anything truly "enabling"), and often do not compensate for the loss of time to devote to science. When the Mars Geoscience/Climatology Orbiter Science Working Group did not recommend a facility camera be flown on that mission (which was renamed Mars Observer later), that allowed, for the first time in 25 years, for a PI camera. In PI instruments, NASA selects investigations, not just instruments. A total package must be proposed, including the development of the instrument (and its testing), its operations and data collection, and the processing and interpretation of the data. In PI instruments, NASA buys knowledge, not hardware or data. Proposals that seek to provide less than this whole are considered "unresponsive" and are often returned without consideration. For a PI, the work effort is even greater than for a facility team leader or member. The compensation is somewhat better (I ended up being paid probably 80% of my time by MOC), but the hours are even more monsterous. I've worked 60-80 hr weeks for most of the past 6 years, and much of my team averaged 50-60 hrs during that same time (remember, as non-exempt salaried employees, we're only paid for 40 hrs). True, I now have a staff of 14 (before I had 1) and a wealth of computer hardware, but my science output for the past six years has been pitiful (hopefully, though, that's about to change). So what is the inducement? Well, there are at least four (not in any particular order): 1. I get to do it MY way. Not really, of course. When you have a engineering team, you do it their way (or your stupid). But you do get considerably greater responsivity from a team you've hand-picked and who work directly for and with you, than you might from a more distant (both in space and time) group selected independently by NASA. This leads to a remarkably greater instrument capability, since you can trade off risk and performance directly, without intermediaries. 2. I get to control what is actually done with the instrument. Thus, specific science topics near and dear to my heart are those that get precedent. Laying to rest some misconceptions about Mars that have propagated into the literature can be quite satisfying. 3. I get to be the first to see many new things about a planet I've studied for almost 25 years. 4. I get to etablish the new precedents in the literature (for better or worse). This is a part of the story of the much maligned proprietary rights period. There are a couple of other reasons for the proprietary rights period that are induced by our contract with NASA. First, NASA only wants to archive the data once. So they want it "bested" (all end-to-end data dropouts that can be fixed should be fixed), they want the final ancillary information (pointing, spacecraft position, etc.), they want a detailed "experimenter's notebook" (why was each datum collected, was the collection successful, is it what was requested, etc.), and they want it all in a format that can be easily transferred to the Planetary Data System which, in concert with the National Space Science Data Center, is responsible for archiving and disceminating planetary mission data to interested scientists and lay persons. Second, NASA requires us to deliver results, not just data. So we are not in accord with our contracts unless we provide interim science reports on an agreed upon schedule. Given budget limitations that lead to personnel limitations, a certain period of time is needed to both validate the data and prepare the preliminary science reports. Previous missions have had 1 year proprietary rights periods, and Voyager took almost 2 years to get the initial Jupiter data out to the general community. On the other hand, Mars Observer's "standard" release is six months from receipt, with the following kluge resulting from scheduling issues and data infusion limitations of the PDS: the first month's data will be available in month seven, the second through sixth month's data will be available in month 13, the 7th through 12th month's in month 19, etc. While I recognize this may be irritating to some, it represents a reasonable compromise with the realities of physical data systems and human nature. To give you an idea of the magnitude of the problem from my perspective, consider that MOC will take roughly 3 terabits of decompressed image data in 687 days compared to Magellan's 3 terabits in 243 days, which means that MOC will acquire the same amount of data in its standard mission as Magellan did in its. Granted, there is a rate difference (about 1/3), but we're doing it with nearly a factor of 20 fewer people, and for a budget that's at least an order of magnitude smaller (the difference is machines, not higher salaries). And we're responsible for BOTH uplink and downlink planning and operations. The bottom line on proprietary rights: as stated by several people on the net, these rights are often viewed as an inducement to get good people to work on projects. This is only part of the explanation...NASA requires considerable work to be performed on the data prior to their release (in a way, the data are out of NASA's hands when released, and they want the data to be in the best, final form at that time). The proprietary rights period will not prevent the public from seeing many of the more interesting and important discoveries from the mission (see accompanying message re: public access to MOC data). It assures that the return on the initial investment is maximized and prepares the material for further use. --- * Origin: MICAP Georgia State Chapter & Georgia Skeptics (9:1012/25.0) Msg # : 1254 PARANET conference From: ANSON KENNEDY Sent: 08-27-93 19:47 To: ALL Rcvd: NO Topic: MARS OBSERVER CAMERA PRIN This is the third (and last) article by Mars Observer Camera Principal Investigator Mike Malin. --- Anson Newsgroups: sci.space Path: netcom.com!netcomsv!apple.com!oli vea!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net !gatech!asuvax!ennews!ennews.eas.asu.edu!malin From: malin@esther.la.asu.edu (Mike Malin) Subject: MOC PI Comments: Public Access to Images Message-ID: Sender: news@ennews.eas.asu.edu (USENET News System) Organization: Mars Observer TES Project, ASU, Tempe AZ Date: Sat, 21 Aug 1993 19:22:49 GMT Lines: 152 This posting is from Mike Malin, Principal Investigator of the Mars Observer Camera, in response to the net discussions that have been going on during the past two weeks. Please do not respond to the e-mail address above. My only link to the network is through this third party and I don't want them deluged with replies. I do read the net occassionally and will try to respond when time and interest permit. Topic: Public access to Mars Observer Camera images First and foremost, you can all help by getting the word out that there is NOTHING DIFFERENT about the public accessibility of the MOC data from previous missions. If anything, access will be improved. The "Face on Mars" crowd seems obsessed with some perceived differences arising from the fact that the MOC is a PI instrument. As I hope to show below, such obsession is unfounded. There are several levels at which the public will have access to the MOC data. These are 1) press releases, 2) public display, 3) NASA Select displays, and 4) Planetary Data System (PDS) release. Definition: "release" means material is in the public domain, and that the MOC team has no control over its use. "display" means the data are shown to the public for information sake, but are not yet in the public domain. 1) Press releases: The Mars Observer Project Office at JPL, the JPL Public Information Office, and NASA Headquarters are all committed to getting information about Mars Observer out to the public. Because Mars Observer operates as a distributed system (i.e., mission operations is not centralized at JPL, but rather is distributed across the country at the institutions of the experiment principal investigators), this represents a formidable challenge. Each PI is free to release whatever he wants from his experiment, whenever he wants, and from his home institution. Our agreement is to inform our colleagues across the country and at JPL of our intentions, but we are not required to seek any authorization for such releases. JPL will try to coordinate a few group releases, keyed to special events in the mission. From the MOC perspective, I hope to release many (dozens?) of images over the course of the 687 day primary mission. Limitations on these releases include: media interest, cost of reproduction, cost of time to prepare the releases, etc. While most of you (by virtue of the fact you're on the internet) have made the switch to volatile communication, much of the world, including the media, have not. Since we can't cater to one special interest group over another (e.g., computer types), we must provide our "product" in as broad a format as possible. There WILL be releases of ORIGINAL DIGITAL DATA in binary form. The MOI-28 day image was an exception, not the rule by which future releases are planned. My staff and I abhor rescanning, and do not intend for our releases to be screwed up in that way. What happened at MOI-28 is that the release was moved forward from the date we had agreed upon (NASA was eager to try to get into the Friday papers rather than Saturdays) and my co-investigation team of scientists, who are not yet in residence (since real data acquisition doesn't start until December), hadn't even seen the image yet. I wanted them to at least have some view of it before the whole world had access to it digitally, so I didn't provide JPL with a releasable digital-format image. JPL PIO simply scanned it in on its own volition. In the future, releases will be better coordinated and the digital and hardcopy versions will be released simultaneously. I should note, however, that the digital version will be EXACTLY that used to generate the hardcopy (i.e., not raw). Raw data will be released as part of our contractual obligation to archive and release ALL of the data to the public domain after validation and initial science analysis (See below, PDS release, and separate message on proprietary rights). In summary, press releases will occur as often, if not more so, than was seen during any of the previous ORBITAL missions. Viking released roughly 30-40 PR images per vehicle (2 orbiters, 2 landers) over two years, and we will easily match or exceed that rate (20/year). Voyagers had the advantage of short encounters and concentrated media attention--don't expect that kind of coverage to extend over a two year mission. 2) Public Display: I REALLY want to get the MOC data out in front of the public, so on my own initiative, but with the enthusiastic support of both the NASA Science Internet and the Mars Observer Project, I have begun negotiating to provide a "live" digital video feed from my facility to the National Air and Space Museum, to JPL's visitor's center, and to NASA Headquarters. Other facilities (Kennedy Space Center's, Johnson Space Center's, and Goddard Space Flight Center's visitor's centers, etc.) may be included. This will be an automatic rescaling of our canonical 2K X 2K pixel images to 480 X 480, with ancillary information (location, image id, etc.) displayed in NTSC format that will occur roughly in "realtime." NASA Select will probably broadcast some of these displays (see below). Images shown via this display are still proprietary, meaning we haven't validated them nor performed initial science analysis. They are not released and cannot be reproduced or recorded digitally without our permission (basically, any reproduction would constitute "release"). Video recording by media is allowed, as is such recording by the public of any broadcasts. The displays are volatile, however, and once the image is gone, it cannot be recovered. This is EXACTLY like the broadcasts of Voyager data during its outer planet encounters. I have gone to considerable trouble to provide this capability, since it isn't inherent in the distributed data system of Mars Observer. 3) NASA Select Displays: NASA Select satellite television will carry some amount of Mars Observer mission coverage, the exact amount and timing is TBD. Competition for NASA Select time is quite steep, especially during Shuttle missions, and the amount of time Mars Observer will get is probably pretty small. For example, Mars Observer begins its mapping operations around the last week in November/first week in December. Since the Space Telescope refurbishment mission is scheduled in the same time period, it is unlikely Observer will get much air time. The commitment for now (very preliminary) is for a 15 minute weekly summary throughout the two year mission, with coverage of special events (like joint press conferences which JPL will plan). HARD CHOICE FOR YOU ALL: do you want to see 24 hr coverage of shuttle missions or coverage of Mars Observer? Let NASA Headquarters know. 4) Planetary Data System (PDS) Release: The PDS is a distributed data archiving system that, working in conjunction with the National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC) at Goddard Space Flight Center, provides public and professional access to space mission data. NASA has written into all Mars Observer contracts the requirement to prepare appropriate archive data products, and to transfer these products to the PDS after the proprietary rights period, which is nominally six months (see separate message re: Proprietary Rights). With recent budget cuts imposed by Administrator Goldin's demand for lower Mission Operations and Data Analysis costs (what did he THINK was going to be cut?), these archived products will be pretty raw, but thanks to modern computers, also not unreasonably inaccessible to people with a little know-how. The MOC data are not in image format in their raw form--we send the data down compressed. Nor is it standard JPEG--we developed our compression (a varient on DCT) before the standard was settled upon, and by using a larger transform block (16 X 16) and a set of 16 requantization tables we developed empirically, we actually get better images for a given Q factor. The intent of the PDS is to act as a bridge between the original investigators and other scientists and the public in gaining access to the data. The PDS nodes (USGS Flagstaff and JPL for Imaging, Washington University for other Geoscience data) are set up to provide both on-line and personal help in finding what is needed and getting it into the format that's desired. Within a year of the end of the mission, all the data will be "in the public domain." But unlike most previous missions (Magellan being the the first of the new breed), data will be released DURING the mission, so you don't have to wait the entire mission to see the very first data. --- * Origin: MICAP Georgia State Chapter & Georgia Skeptics (9:1012/25.0) Msg # : 1257 PARANET conference From: SHELDON WERNIKOFF Sent: 08-26-93 20:08 To: BOB DUNN Rcvd: NO Topic: ODE TO THE MARS PROBE ODE TO THE MARS OBSERVER (To the tune of Gilligan's Island theme song) NASA built a satellite, and aimed it at the stars, they sent it to take pictures of the surface of Mars. eleven months it travelled, and everyone was sure, there'd be no major problems on this one planet tour... refrain "one planet tour" But then without a warning, something big went wrong, the radio went silent, the satellite was gone. Despite the preparations, and the billion dollar cost, and despite all the efforts of the NASA crew, the mission it was lost... refrain: "mission it was lost" A billion dollar space probe, gone without a trace, Could it be connected with the Martian happy face? Some people swear it's up there, as clear as clear can be, Could it be there's something else we're not supposed to see? refrain: "not supposed to see" Someday soon on a mountain top, on a clear and moonless night, An astronomer, with his telescope, will be watching Mars, all alone, And there he'll see a message reading... "SEND US SHARON STONE" ********************************************** * THE U.F.O. BBS - http://www.ufobbs.com/ufo * **********************************************