How Scientists Repurposed a Camera on ESA’s Mars Express Mission

A digicam aboard the Mars Specific orbiter finds a brand new lease on life.

Generally, limitations can result in innovation. A recent paper highlights how researchers are using the VMC (Visible Monitoring Digicam) aboard the European Area Company’s (ESA) venerable Mars Specific orbiter.

The work is a collaboration between the European Area Company (ESA), the IAA-CSIC Institute of Astrophysics in Andalusia Spain, and the College of the Basque Nation.

A Mars Webcam

Mars Specific is ESA’s first Mars mission. Launched on a Soyuz rocket, Mars Specific arrived in orbit across the Purple Planet on Christmas Day 2003. The VMC was designed for one major objective: to watch the departure of the ill-fated Beagle 2 lander, which was launched from Mars Specific on December 19^th, slightly below every week previous to orbital insertion. The digicam was switched off after the Beagle 2 launch was full, then introduced again on-line in 2007.

“(The) VMC digicam was initially supposed to take just a few snapshots of the lander launch,” Alejandro Cardesín-Moinelo (ESA Mars Specific Science Operations) informed Universe At this time. “The digicam was then ‘forgotten’ for a number of years till it was switched on once more in 2007 as an engineering take a look at. This confirmed an important worth for public outreach and so it began to be operated recurrently. In recent times, VMC photographs began getting increasingly more in style and raised the eye of the group as a result of its scientific potential.”

A Distinctive Orbit

The VMC was initially solely tasked with taking supplementary photographs of Mars. A 2016 collaboration noticed a push to improve the digicam for scientific use. In 2018, it discovered a task monitoring the Martian climate. Mars Specific is in a virtually polar orbit. Its distant 11,560 kilometer apoapsis vantage level alongside its 7.5 hour orbit is right for full disk observations.

The small VMC digicam has a 40 by 30 diploma vast area of view. This implies it monitor full disk climate on Mars. Mars Specific additionally gives the important thing benefit of a extra versatile orbit versus different missions. The mission sees areas at completely different occasions and at illuminations.

Mars Specific as a Climate Satellite tv for pc

“VMC has confirmed to be an important asset within the world monitoring of the Martian ambiance, complementing all different scientific devices and offering very helpful info on meteorological phenomena, largely atmospheric aerosols, ice clouds and dirt storms” says Cardesín-Moinelo. “Among the many many scientific contributions, the primary discovery was the putting Arsia Mons ‘elongated cloud’ noticed in 2018, a 1,500 kilometer cloud which had not been reported by any earlier mission.”

The imaging workflow for VMC makes use of bias, flat and darkish frames, not in contrast to what novice astrophotographers use to course of photographs. VMC is much like previous turn-of-the-century webcams, and produces small photographs which can be straightforward to transmit again to Earth.

This additionally permits the VMC to hold out critical science. The instrument is calibrated for full disk photometry, helpful for monitoring climate and modifications on Mars. Although VMC has a restricted dynamic vary, operating a wide range of exposures permits for the HDR (Excessive Dynamic Vary) imaging wanted to disclose elusive options. Smartphone cameras use this form of ‘hack’ to tease out element.

Evolution of a Mars Digicam

“VMC is much like a ‘low cost’ customary cell-phone digicam of the early 2000s, with lower than 0.2 megapixels,” says Cardesín-Moinelo. “This can not present an enormous stage of element, however is situated in an ‘extraordinary place,’ flying round Mars. This permits us to retrieve tens of photographs of the total disk of Mars each day so we will monitor the atmospheric clouds and dirt storms, which we couldn’t do with another instrument. This type of ‘low cost’ vast digicam has confirmed very helpful, so we are actually pushing to fly an up-to-date digicam in future missions, with extra decision and higher efficiency to enhance the worldwide monitoring of the planet.”

However VMC had different points to beat as properly with a purpose to present essential science knowledge. First, Mars Specific’s inside clock isn’t fully correct. Plus, engineers fastened VMC on the chassis of the spacecraft. This implies it factors the place Mars Specific factors throughout operations. Along with utilizing star area photographs to get a repair on the spacecraft’s place, the group makes use of transits of the moons Phobos and Deimos throughout the disk of Mars as a clock to calibrate photographs and confirm timestamps.

VMC isn’t alone in monitoring Martian climate. The United Arab Emirates’ Mars Hope additionally does full disk imaging and might help see what’s presently happening. These opposing view factors are helpful to have as mud storm season evolves. Different devices comparable to JunoCam aboard NASA’s Juno mission in orbit round Jupiter are designed solely round an analogous form of public collaboration.

Small Cameras for Small Missions

Lastly, these types of primary off-the-shelf cameras have gotten customary gear on smallsats. Examples in planetary science embrace the Mars Dice One MarCO-A and B cubesats which hitched a experience with NASA’s Mars Insight lander which flew previous Mars in 2018, the Minerva-II landers aboard the Hayabusa 2 asteroid mission, and the Italian Area Company’s LICIACube mission which witnessed the DART influence into asteroid Dimorphos in 2022.

Actually, this can be a game-changer for Martian climate predictions. It’s fascinating to see the distinctive photographs of Mars supplied by VMC, as an illustration of how previous {hardware} in area can discover a new objective.