How many of you would watch hours of footage of something driving on the surface of mars or the moon?
We have fancy 360 photo footage of mars...but why don't we have simple video footage yet? I mean, I'd love to watch something more across the surface of the planet...photos are great and all but why can't we get video? Just a thought perhaps I'm missing or do not understanding something here. Thanks
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answers:
ANDRE L say: How far from your house does your wifi work ?
Mars, at it's closest, is 40 million kilometers away, and can be as far as 325 million kilometers. Do you have any clue as to the kind of bandwidth that such a video feed would require and thus, the kind of power and transmitters that would be needed on the rovers on Mars to send so much data in real time ? Clearly, you do NOT.
Yes, we can see such video from the ISS. At most, it's about 400 km away from the Earth. And, there are powerful comsats in Earth orbit that can relay the signals from the ISS, plus, the ISS has room and power to support much more powerful transmission equipment.
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Roger the Mole say: The thing you're missing is that there is nothing moving on the surface of Mars (or the moon) besides the camera.
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Ronald 7 say: I would
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poldi2 say: Video takes a lot more bandwidth than still pictures. At the distance of Mars, the video would be very jumpy, certainly not good definition.
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quantumclaustrophobe say: I have to ask... why? The vehicle moves at inches per second... video of that would be extremely boring. Then, you need to have the bandwidth to *send* that video of the slowly changing landscape.
It's far easier - and more fun to see - stills taken every couple of feet, then pasted together in movie. When the vehicle only covers 7 1/2 feet per minute at top speed... I just don't think that would be a very exciting video to watch.
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someg say: If they get one cameraman's shadow in the video, the game is up.
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Adullah M say: If NASA shows them all and nothing there catch up with the interest of the people who pay tax for NASA then they may not support their projects any more.
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audrey say: I wouldn't waste a second of my precious time on it.
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say: Simple issue of the volume of data and their bandwidth/power supply
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Henry say: It's moving across the set in Arctic Canada/Greenland.
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CarolOklaNola say: You seem not to realize EVERY piece of equipment that goes to Mars has mass that requires fuel that also has mass to get it out of Earth's gravity well, reach escape velocity, then mire fuel with mass to slow it down so it can land. Yes, there are PLENTY of videos, Many of them taken by the MRO satellite that is orbiting Mars fight now. If you really want another camera to film rkvers to make videos on Mars. You pay for it and ALl the fuel. Congress and NASA and other space agencies do not have unlimited financial resources. Not everyone is going to be fascinated by those videos as you are.
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Adam D say: The rover is there to do science, not send back pretty images. The images it takes have to serve dual purpose - PR and acquiring useful information. Low res videos aren't going to do much for either of those.
And as others have stated, the rovers on Mars move really slowly. Opportunity had a maximum speed of 2 inches per second. That's 10 feet per minute. But on average it was held to about a fifth of that - so to cover 10 feet would take almost an hour (keep in mind we're talking about driving a remote control vehicle on another planet, with a 40 minute communication delay). So a video of the rover moving would look pretty much the same as a photo of the rover sitting there.
EDIT: Sorry, there's an obvious math error in my answer. At an average speed of 1/5th the maximum, 10 feet would take 5 minutes, not 50. Still too slow to enjoy watching.
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PhotonX say: Whatever video footage you might see would just be a lower resolution version of the still images already taken, but that's not the main objection here. You seem to be entertaining a mental image of a dune buggy blasting pell-mell around the Martian landscape, rooster tails flying behind spinning wheels. The reality is that the Opportunity rover drove 28 miles in 15 years. That's not 28 miles per hour; or even 28 miles per year; it's just a tad under 2 miles per year. Why in the world do you think you need a real-time video of that?
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Robert say: It would look like it was driving in the desert of Area 51. Maybe 1/4 hr.
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