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Location and Setting of the Mars InSight Lander, Instruments, and Landing Site
Golombek, M.; Warner, N. H.; Williams, N. +23 more
Knowing precisely where a spacecraft lands on Mars is important for understanding the regional and local context, setting, and the offset between the inertial and cartographic frames. For the InSight spacecraft, the payload of geophysical and environmental sensors also particularly benefits from knowing exactly where the instruments are located. A…
Solar Irradiance Variability: Modeling the Measurements
Kopp, G.; Lean, J. L.; Marchenko, S. V. +3 more
New models of the Sun's irradiance variability are developed from 15 years of direct observations made by the Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) spacecraft from 2003 to 2017 (inclusive). Multiple linear regression parameterizes the observations in terms of facular brightening and sunspot darkening, which are the primary sources of sola…
Compiling Magnetosheath Statistical Data Sets Under Specific Solar Wind Conditions: Lessons Learnt From the Dayside Kinetic Southward IMF GEM Challenge
Dimmock, A. P.; Hietala, H.; Zou, Y.
The Geospace Environmental Modelling (GEM) community offers a framework for collaborations between modelers, observers, and theoreticians in the form of regular challenges. In many cases, these challenges involve model-data comparisons to provide wider context to observations or validate model results. To perform meaningful comparisons, a statisti…
Open-Source Software Analysis Tool to Investigate Space Plasma Turbulence and Nonlinear DYNamics (ODYN)
Echim, M. M.; Teodorescu, E.
We have designed and built a versatile modularized software library—ODYN—that wraps a comprehensive set of advanced data analysis methods meant to facilitate the study of turbulence, nonlinear dynamics, and complexity in space plasmas. The Python programming language is used for the algorithmic implementation of models and methods devised to under…
A Generic Pushbroom Sensor Model for Planetary Photogrammetry
Geng, Xun; Xu, Qing; Lan, Chaozhen +1 more
Different imaging instruments are designed in the planetary exploration missions, which require respective photogrammetric software modules to support the geometric processing of planetary remote sensing images. To decrease the cost of software development and maintenance, this paper presents a generic pushbroom sensor model for planetary photogra…
Empirical Brightness Control and Equalization of Mars Context Camera Images
Robbins, Stuart J.; Kirchoff, Michelle R.; Hoover, Rachael H.
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft has been in orbit around Mars since March 2006. The Context Camera (CTX) on MRO has returned over 115,000 images of the planet at approximately 5-6 m per pixel, providing nearly global coverage. During that time, Mars has gone through nearly seven of its own years, changing solar distance from 1.38 …
Robust Adaptive Spacecraft Array Derivative Analysis
Vogt, J.; Blagau, A.; Pick, L.
Multispacecraft missions such as Cluster, Themis, Swarm, and MMS contribute to the exploration of geospace with their capability to produce gradient and curl estimates from sets of spatially distributed in situ measurements. This paper combines all existing estimators of the reciprocal vector family for spatial derivatives and their errors. The re…
Planetary Sensor Models Interoperability Using the Community Sensor Model Specification
Hare, T.; Laura, J. R.; Mapel, J.
This paper presents the photogrammetric foundations upon which the Community Sensor Model specification depends, describes common coordinate system and reference frame transformations that support conversion between image sensor (charge-coupled device) coordinates to some arbitrary body coordinate, and describes the U.S. Geological Survey Astrogeo…
Coupling Mars Ground and Orbital Views: Generate Viewsheds of Mastcam Images From the Curiosity Rover, Using ArcGIS® and Public Datasets
Stein, N.; Nachon, M.; Borges, S. +3 more
The Mastcam (Mast Camera) instrument onboard the NASA Curiosity rover provides an exclusive view of Mars: High-resolution color images from Mastcam allow users to study Gale crater's geologic terrains along Curiosity's path. These ground observations complement the spatially broader views of Gale crater provided by spacecrafts from orbit. However,…