New images give clearer look at lost Beagle 2 Mars lander
LONDON -- Scientists at University College London have released a series of sharper images of the surface of Mars that show the lost Beagle 2 probe, which was re-discovered in January 2015.
Using an “image stacking and matching technique” called Super-Resolution Restoration (SRR), they’ve pieced together a zoomed-in version of the photo of the probe issued by Professor Mark Sims from the University of Leicester last year that confirmed the fate of the Beagle 2.
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The new image gives a clearer look at the crash site and gives stronger evidence that the white mark on the planet's surface is indeed the probe.
When zoomed in further, the bright spot begins to resemble the ill-fated probe, which was launched by the European Space Agency back in December 2003 but lost contact with Earth and wasn't seen until last year.
The clearer image adds credence to the theory that it did in fact land on Mars but failed to unfurl its solar panels.
“Given the size of Beagle 2, even with super-resolution images you are not likely to see more than a series of blobs because it is so small,” Sims, who worked on the original photo, said.
“What it does show is that it is on the surface and it is at least partially deployed.”
The UCL team have released images of other parts of Mars, too, including the lake beds discovered by NASA's Curiosity rover, NASA's MER-A rover tracks and the Home Plate plateau.
The SRR technique stacks and matches pictures of the same area from different angles, allowing researchers to improve on the 25cm resolution limit on cameras currently orbiting Earth and Mars. The technique allows objects as small as 5cm to be seen from a 25cm telescope, the researchers say.
The scientists used between four and eight images of the surface of Mars taken with NASA’s HiRISE camera to achieve the 5cm target resolution.
“We now have the equivalent of drone-eye vision anywhere on the surface of Mars where there are enough clear repeat pictures,” Professor Jan-Peter Muller from the UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory said in statement. “It allows us to see objects in much sharper focus from orbit than ever before and the picture quality is comparable to that obtained from landers.”
His colleague, research associate Mr Yu Tao added: “Using novel machine vision methods, information from lower resolution images can be extracted to estimate the best possible true scene. This technique has huge potential to improve our knowledge of a planet’s surface from multiple remotely sensed images."
“In the future, we will be able to recreate rover-scale images anywhere on the surface of Mars and other planets from repeat image stacks.”
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Tim Chester was Senior Editor, Real Time News in Los Angeles. Before that he was Deputy Editor of Mashable UK in London. Prior to joining Mashable, Tim was a Senior Web Editor at Penguin Random House, helping to relaunch the Rough Guides website and other travel brands. He was also a writer for Buzzfeed, GQ and The Sunday Times, covering everything from culture to tech and current affairs. Before that, he was Deputy Editor at NME.COM, overseeing content and development on the London-based music and entertainment site. Tim loves music and travel and has combined these two passions at festivals from Iceland to Malawi and beyond.
