Mars High Resolution Camera Capsule (1965)

[Graham1973]

1965 (Pre-Mariner 4 Atmosphere) design for a hard landing capsule designed to take 1 high resolution photograph of the surface of Mars and then transmit it back to Earth over a period of four days. The camera used would appear to be a distant ancestor of those eventually used on the Viking missions.

The study does not discuss re-entry, but does go into some detail on possible landing areas.


Study Of A High Resolution Facsimile System Experiment On The Surface Of The Planet Mars

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19660004285_1966004285.pdf

 

[OM]

...So, based on bit rates and a four day transmission time, just *what* was JPL considering "high resolution" to be?

[has nightmare of trying to download just a 640x480 Windows background using 110bd accoustical modem]

 

[Graham1973]

...So, based on bit rates and a four day transmission time, just *what* was JPL considering "high resolution" to be?

[has nightmare of trying to download just a 640x480 Windows background using 110bd accoustical modem]

Actual transmission time would have been at a maximum 8 hours (2 hrs per day transmission time) this is assuming the first communication session was not used for giving the commands to take the shot. With a 12bit/second transmission rate (& assuming a 4-bit, byte (Used on Mariner 3/4)) the largest possible picture size would have been 1296000 bytes (12.96mb)

The report does however propose using a 6-bit byte, using that (& assuming an 8hr total transmission time) the largest possible picture size could have been 864000 bytes (8.64mb) in size.

(Also assuming I've got my sums right )

However, the above is purely based on possible transmission rates.

In about the same period JPL was proposing landers designed to return 600 bits of data from the surface of Mars (Atmospheric readings only, no cameras).

Edit: I've just found something while trying to see just how much memory they planned to fit to this camera which should give a better idea of the 'size' of the picture in bits (See attached).