These Are The Cameras Currently Shooting On Mars

08-06-2012 • http://www.popphoto.com, By Tim Barribeau

Last night, NASA successfully landed the Curiosity rover on Mars, sending back its first picture to international acclaim. We've seen a couple of other small images beam back, but the question all us gearheads want to know is: what cameras do they have on board? Thankfully, NASA loves to tell us this stuff.

The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL, aka the Curiosity) has two mast cameras, as seen here. One has a fixed 34mm f/8 lens that covers a 15° field of view, covering 1200x1200 pixels on a 1600 by 1200 CCD. The other is a fixed 100mm f/10 lens, with a 5.1° field of view on an identical sensor. You can see some pre-launch images taken with them here.

These cameras can actually do a lot more than what we've seen so far. They'll transmit color images as they have Bayer Pattern Filter CCDs, and have adjustable filters to capture different wavelengths of light:

Each Mastcam camera head also has a filter wheel, so that images taken by looking through filters covering different, narrow visible and near-infrared wavelengths can be obtained. Filters for the 34 mm Mastcam are (in nanometers): 440, 525, 550, 675, 750, 865, 1034, and 440(neutral density). Filters for the 100 mm Mastcam are (in nanometers): 440, 525, 550, 800, 905, 935, 1035, and 880(neutral density). The neutral density filters are for viewing the Sun. Each filter wheel also includes a visually clear (actually infrared rejection coated) filter for nominal RGB (red, green, blue) imaging using the Bayer Pattern CCD.