UA-Operated Stereo Camera Selected For Mars Mission

The UA's High Resolution Stereo Color Imager, or HiSCI, features an innovative rotation drive for three-dimensional imaging.

As the instrument orbits the Red Planet, it snaps pictures once a feature of interest on the surface below comes into view.

HiSCI then swings around and takes more pictures of the feature as it passes overhead.

NASA and the European Space Agency, or ESA, have embarked on a joint program to explore Mars in the coming decades and have selected five science instruments - including one from the University of Arizona - for the first mission.

The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, scheduled to launch in 2016, is the first of three joint robotic missions to the Red Planet. It will study the chemical makeup of the Martian atmosphere with a 1,000-fold increase in sensitivity over previous Mars orbiters.

The mission will focus on trace gases, including methane, which could be potentially geochemical or biological in origin and be indicators for the existence of life on Mars. It also will serve as an additional communications relay for Mars surface missions beginning in 2018.

A stereo camera called the High Resolution Stereo Color Imager, or HiSCI, operated by the UA, will be a part of the orbiter.

"The HiSCI camera will provide us with the very best color and stereo imaging of Mars we have ever seen, so we can find and study surface changes," said Alfred McEwen, a professor of planetary science at the UA who leads the HiSCI project.

HiSCI will be operated by the same team at the UA's Lunar and Planetary Lab, or LPL, that has been acquiring images from Mars in stunning detail using the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE, camera that is orbiting Mars.

HiSCI's color images will be much wider (more than 5 miles) than those of HiRISE (less than 1 mile), which will allow researchers to see much more of the Martian surface and changes that are occurring there.

Having the three-dimensional and color information from HiSCI also will add to the value of existing high-resolution images from HiRISE, according to Shane Byrne, assistant professor at LPL and deputy principal investigator on the HiSCI project.