NASA Mars Visualization Alliance

Meeting 2

Summary

April 16, 2002

10:30 a.m. CDT

Clarifications from last meeting- there are no belly cams, and there are no microphones on the rovers. The FIDO Rover field tests are going to be August 10^th - 19^th. The January test dates are still under discussion.

Science Museum of Minnesota is currently using MPEG-2 files that are 1080i, which is a nice standard. It can be used on any sized monitor; it’s a 16x9 aspect. It is fine on RGB monitors on up through projection systems, plasma displays, and bis screens, including SMM’s 60’x90’ flat screen in their Omni theatre.

No sample footage is available at this time for museums to use for testing. Sample footage will be discussed at a later date.

Christine Johnson/JPL will put together a compilation tape on VHS so the museums can get an idea of what is being shot. There are some rocket-firing tests going on off lab that will be shot over the next two weeks. There is also an airbag test already complete. Music is behind some of the footage. The compilation video will be a teaser to let the museums know what kind of footage is available either in raw form or in short little snaps. The museums are encouraged to let JPL know what you’d like to see; including possibly some editing for those who don’t have their own capability.

Future videos can be made available to museums as both processed and unprocessed products. The schedule for video shoots changes constantly and is problematic. Only a ballpark schedule can be provided at this time.

Stephanie Lievense/JPL is to work on putting together a calendar of major events for MER including some testing, shipping and launch dates.

The URL for the Mars Visualization Alliance is http://marsdata.jpl.nasa.gov/muse/index.html. Protection is IP based (no password is needed). Send your IP addresses to Anita Sohus/JPL. We will walk through this page at one of the next meetings.

Members are encouraged to share information. To do this JPL will set up a mutual FTP site, which should make sharing very easy. JPL will consider the Alliance members as the points of contact for the ftp site.

For a panorama test there is the Mars “Presidential Pan” available through the Planetary Photojournal. Go to http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov, click on More Query Methods, enter PIA01466 in the photo identifier box at the top of page, hit enter. Follow instructions to download full res image.

Aurelio Tinio/JPL has been looking at GIS aspects of the landing site selection process. He has talked to Tim Parker about trying to convert his PhotoShop image files into a GIS format so they can be provided to museums. When Aurelio gets a copy of the GIS software, he can import the Photoshop imagess into a GIS format. NASA Ames is working on some of these products as well.

Matt Golombek /JPL (Mars Pathfinder Project Scientist) will discuss landing site selection at the May 14 telecon.

The Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) dataset is the best to use for displays. It would be ideal to get the best resolution possible color balance scene of the planet for members to use. Eric de Jong/JPL will work on obtaining these images, which may take some time.

MGS doesn’t survey the entire planet in high resolution. When people see these images, they tend to think everything is available at high resolution. That is a misconception. For purposes of planetarium/museum shows, if the data isn’t there, the presenter will try to build a realistic looking scene based on what is known about the planet’s surface. Much of it is artistically filled in.

The founding members of the Mars Viz Alliance will help us understand what the questions and issues are in dealing with these data in their venues; at some point in the future, we plan to make the data available to the broader museum community. Martin Ratcliffe from IPS pointed out that some vendors, such as Evans and Sutherland (Star Rider) and Sky Scan (Sky Vision) might want to help certain facilities build some of the tools that they might need to use the data in their systems.

Museums need approximately one year before landing to prepare events and programs, with perhaps six months of playing around with the data to see what can be done with it before they even start planning a show, and things are most likely not going to work the first time! The FIDO field tests in August can be used for this kind of testing.

Telecons will likely be monthly. The next one is scheduled for May 14, 8:30 a.m. PDT. Call-in number will be sent to all participants.