HRSC is a pushbroom camera that builds up long images as it flies above the Martian surface. When it is at its closest approach to Mars, at 250 kilometers, the swaths are 52 kilometers wide. HRSC has nine channels: five panchromatic and four color. The five panchromatic channels are pointed at different angles -- one nadir, two forward, and two backward -- which allows HRSC to do near-simultaneous stereo imaging of every spot it photographs on Mars. The blue and green color channels are near-nadir, while red and infrared color channels are pointed forward and backward along-track, respectively.

DLR