Mars Exploration Rover

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Mission (since 2003) is an unmanned Mars exploration mission that includes sending two Rovers (robots) to explore the Martian surface and geology. The mission was led by Project Manager Peter Theisinger of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Principal Investigator Steven Squyres, professor of astronomy at Cornell University.

Maestro

The NASA team uses a software application called SAP to view images collected from the rover, and to plan its daily activities. There is a version available to the public called Maestro. Maestro is written in Java so it will run on many different platforms including Microsoft Windows, Macintosh, Solaris, Linux, and Irix. The software, along with companion datasets, can be obtained from Maestro Headquarters.

Related Topics:
Java - Microsoft Windows - Macintosh - Solaris - Linux - Irix

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Timestamps of Mars Exploration Rover images

It is possible to tell the time an image was taken by the Mars Exploration Rovers from the image's filename.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The images taken by Spirit and Opportunity have filenames with a built-in timestamp: characters 3–11 represent the number of (Earth) seconds since the J2000.0 epoch (January 1 2000 11:58:55.816 UTC) http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/edr_filename_key.html. Thus an image with a name like "1P132176262ESF05A6P2670R8M1.JPG" has a timestamp of 132176262 seconds, which corresponds to March 10 2004 07:36:37.816 UTC.

Related Topics:
Spirit - Opportunity - J2000.0 - January 1 - 2000 - UTC - March 10 - 2004

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~