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Planetary News: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (2010)

BLOG: Your chance to shoot your own high-resolution pictures of Mars

By Emily Lakdawalla
January 21, 2010

Space missions are publicly funded, but they're not publicly operated (for obvious good reasons). Still, wouldn't it be cool if you got a chance to drive a spacecraft? For three years, the Mars Global Surveyor mission allowed members of the public to suggest targets for imaging by the Mars Orbiter Camera (something I discussed in this post), but since we lost Mars Global Surveyor the public has not had a similar opportunity.

At last, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is following in Mars Global Surveyor's footsteps. The HiRISE camera team today announced HiWish, a mechanism by which the public can suggest imaging targets. Their invitation states:

"Ever wanted to know what a particular patch of the Martian surface looked like at 30 cm/pixel? Let us know where that patch is, we might take a picture of it. The HiRISE public suggestion tool, called HiWish, is a Web site that allows you to log in and select a spot on Mars as a suggestion for where the HiRISE instrument should take an image. If you don't have a particular location, you can use the HiWish site to browse around the planet, examine the locations of other data sets, and find a place that should be imaged. It will be put into our targeting database, and may get selected as an upcoming observation. Furthermore, the HiWish site allows you to track your suggestions and be notified when one of your suggestions gets taken."

Cool! So let's see how it works, shall we? More on The Planetary Society's blog...

Click to enlarge > Zephyria Tholus, Mars As seen through the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE team's "HiWish" web interface, this putative stratovolcano called Zephyria Tholus has been covered repeatedly in images from Mars Global Surveyor MOC and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE and CTX. Credit: NASA / JPL / UA