Remember when the Soviets used to launch things into the high pressure, high temperature cloud that is known as the atmosphere of Venus in the 1970s? Now they are trying to sharpen the images sent back from those probes.
"Most of the images one saw were derived from film recordings or scans of poor quality printed pictures," Mitchell told SPACE.com. "There are several things I believe can be accomplished by yet another go at the data," he said.I guess it's a bit like re-mixing songs from the 70s using computer technology, except we're doing space images now. If nothing else, this has got to be exciting for the sake of getting another look at a planet we haven't had much luck with viewing.
His work has paid off.
Using a variety of techniques, Mitchell has reconstructed much more flawless versions of the old Soviet Venus imagery. Furthermore, the optical aficionado is trying to recover accurate color of the Venusian terrain by studying the spectral response of Venera camera filters. Even the skylight spectrum that the Venera landers measured using onboard instruments is being taken into account.
"From their 1980s publications, you can see that the Russians understood the problem," Mitchell said. "But in the early 1980s they may have lacked the computer resources. Chartless camera calibration algorithms had not been invented at that time."
Space Walk Time
Here it goes. Time for a space walk on the ISS.
Any spacewalk to fix the gyroscope circuit breaker would be only the second time both station crew members would be outside the space station, leaving no one inside. The first such walk was in February.Guys in spacesuits slowly creeping across the surface of the ISS, looking for a piece of instrument that needs replacing. One of them looks up and in the moment is entranced by the mind-boggling size and depth of the void that is space... Okay, that's the screenwriter in me typing that happily, but it's a little scary no?
The station originally had four gyroscopes, but one of them failed two years ago. It was to have been repaired last year, but the shuttle Columbia accident grounded the three remaining shuttles and postponed that repair.
- Art Neuro