ElderFox Documentaries has compiled a 4K UHD video tour of Mars using ultra-high resolution images and photo mosaics captured by NASA's Mars rovers. It's a stunning look at the Martian landscape and a great way to view another world nearly 34 million miles away.
The video is technically a slideshow, as there are massive technical constraints limiting NASA's ability to record and transmit high-resolution video from Mars to earth. As NASA points out, it can take about 20 hours to transmit 250 megabits directly back to earth. There is an eight-minute window during each Martian day (sol) in which the rover can send the same 250 megabits of data to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as it passes overhead. As ElderFox Documentaries notes, at those transmission speeds and considering that 'nothing really moves on Mars,' it makes more sense to send images back home rather than video files.
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In the video above, we see images captured by three different NASA Mars rovers: Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity. In the bottom left corner of the video tour, ElderFox has noted the Mars rover used to capture the images and the location on Mars in which they were captured.
If you want to see more of Mars, we have a lot more to show you. In March, NASA shared the highest-resolution panoramic image of Mars ever captured by its Curiosity rover. You can see a video NASA published below. In July 2017, Curiosity captured images of clouds above the Martian landscape. Earlier that year, space enthusiast Jan Fröjdman turned NASA anaglyph images into a simulated flight video using 33,000 reference points and NASA's own depth information. You see that incredible video here.
Agree. Plenty of Earth's desert regions look exactly the same. Perhaps only shots of the moon's dusty grey surface are even less interesting. Just tell me when one of those Mars rovers digs up something like a snail shell or a bone, and it might be worth a news item, or perhaps a space craft that can get there in a week.
It's literally ANOTHER world. I'm sure someone out there is exploring our seabed and finding new oil/energy source in some trenches somewhere. I'm not too worries about that going undiscovered for long.
I can see panorama stitching seams. One could assume they would at least use a good free panorama software like Hugin, if the Mars budget is already used elsewhere. It could also be because of an intern who controlled the camera rotations and used too large steps for panorama. Not a good idea to save money there because it will affect greatly to the final result. Can't really believe this is happening in a place like NASA which is extremely tech oriented.
Amazing video, but would have much preferred no voiceover, we should be left to marval at the landscape uninterrupted. I turned the sound off but the music was a good accompaniment.
It is such a brilliant video. Sitting in my office and watching the landscape from MARS, it is unreal and thrilling, however it is true!!! Can't imagine that someday our EARTH will just like MARS and other people will like me to watch video of the landscape of our EARTH......
I am all for space exploration. But how many of these billion dollar wheeling drone projects are they going to sen to that one planet of red and brown rocks. There’s more than Mars out there
I agree. All those billions would be better spent on renewable energy devices like solar panels, wind turbines, and submerged sea turbines. Once we can make 100% sustainable energy and have stopped f@%^ing up our only planet, we can happily spend some time getting to the next one.
io rep. Your right there are some loonies out there. I live in Sweden and sometimes when I talk with my brother who lives in Australia, it’s daylight in Stockholm and dark in Perth. Perhaps he is on the underside of the disc, down under?
Tell me if you or anyone else here took photos of "real" value, and explain why it's real. You might realize that value (and money) has little to do with reality.
Turn the sound on, it gets explained :) (Yes I listened and think you should suffer to) In short, they changed the colour to identify rocks better and for clarity.
I had the sound on, thanks. Perhaps you should re-listen until you, too, get the ambiguity in the commentary. :) They say the 'true colour' of the sky is reddish and hazy -- and they say it while showing a blue sky. Then they start saying how some images are recoloured "for geologists" and show a blue sky -- and they say it while showing a red sky.
Knowing, as I do, that part of geological classification includes colour description, the idea of photos being "recoloured for geologists" is inherently questionable.
That *might* have been the 6m00s to 6m35s section. I just wish they had made it clear. That's why my initial comment was about that section looking the most surreal of all.
I think the colour correction would be done to make the geology appear as it would under under prevailing light conditions on earth - where (so far) 100% of Geologists live and view things. That will provide more information for earth-bound Geologists than having everything with a reddish cast, even though that will be how they appear on Mars.
Good point. Although, as photographers, we are familiar with how different lightings can be 'prevailing' on Earth. Geologists seem to be able to function in direct sunlight, in cloudy conditions, shade, even tungsten and fluoro lighting. It's an interesting issue.
They have downloaded the panorama image at a maximum rate of 2MB a second from the rover is like waiting for anything to load up a page using the ancient dial up modem. That and you also have to take the speed of light into account which is about 10 minutes.
Still, a 3 minute delay. I think it also depends where in the orbit Earth and Mars are at as well. If both of them are on the opposite sides, it will probably take longer than that.
3 minutes would only be at closest approach (ironically called opposition). At their most distant, it can take light from Mars over 21 minutes to reach us.
Once we finally colonize Mars in the distant future, the only thing that could work in an interstellar internet would be the email. Forget the streaming services or even the basic web. Clicking the link on a webpage from Mars would probably get you excited what will come out in 6 to 42 minutes. lol
Yes I know, the only difference with real video is that the depth perception is far more realistic. This because you get the parallax effect rather than a panning motion via the nodal point. I understand technically not feasible but in my opinion this is still a great slideshow.
I like Martian rovers as much as the next person. I mean, you’re sending a car to another planet, how cool is that? But there is a LOT of stuff on Mars, and NASA is about to launch another one this month. Curiosity is still driving around, slowly, taking pictures, drilling holes, scooping stuff up... Are they just going to be heartbroken if they don’t find past signs of life? Cuz it’s not looking good. Send one to Europa. Send one to Titan.
A Europa mission is being planned and hopefully further funding for development will be forthcoming. NASA hasn't sent any rovers to Mars with the ability to detect life directly. Perserverence will take samples to be brought back during another mission so hopefully some signs of life (past or present) will be discovered when those samples are returned to Earth.
It may be called "Mars in 4K", but the highest resolution offered here is 1080p.
Also, it turns out that it is not actually 4k footage shot on Mars. It's post-produced fakery using stitched panoramas from stills taken by the Rovers. With a voice-over explaining why they couldn't actually do what they are claiming to have done...
It would be far more honest - not to mention more interesting - to just show us the stitched stills.
@SilvanBromide: You're probably using a browser that doesn't support 4K on YouTube (Safari, perhaps?), as you can see from this screenshot 4K is available.
As for it being 'fakery,' we specifically state in the article the video is made up of stills and not actually 4K video (due to the limitations also mentioned in the article). Nothing about this is misleading.
I was gonna say something similar, Gannon. Being really pedantic about language, one could argue that they misused the word 'footage' in the video caption (i.e. to be entirely correct "New footage from Mars rendered in stunning 4K resolution" should have been "Pictures from Mars rendered into stunning 4K footage") but other than that there is absolutely no deception anywhere about what this is. The narration is over the top for sure, but otherwise it's just a video presentation of awe-inspiring high-quality images from Mars. Thanks for posting!
@Greg VdB: Yea, the narrator using the word 'footage' can be misconstrued if you're REALLY determined to get pedantic, but I think all of us here in DPR can understand he isn't referring to raw video capture; and for those that don't understand that, we definitively lay that out in the article itself.
As footage is related to the length of the medium the movie is recorded on when using film, I think "pixelage" is not appropriate, too, IMHO, as pixel is more linked to image resolution than to movie length. I think "megabitage" or "gigabitage" is more appropriate... ;-)
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