{"id":5600,"date":"2012-11-29T09:11:06","date_gmt":"2012-11-29T14:11:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.cos.ucf.edu\/?p=5600"},"modified":"2016-12-21T09:10:36","modified_gmt":"2016-12-21T14:10:36","slug":"visual-cues-help-earthling-search-the-alien-planet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sciences.ucf.edu\/news\/visual-cues-help-earthling-search-the-alien-planet\/","title":{"rendered":"Visual cues help earthling search the alien planet"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>

Dr. Daniel Britt, College of Sciences, holds the materials used for the calibration targets. The materials are extremely stable, flexible and \u201cinnocent,\u201d meaning they will not damage tools on the Curiosity rover.<\/p><\/div>\n

In August 2012, NASA\u2019s\u00a0Curiosity<\/em>\u00a0rover landed on Mars, following an eight-month flight and what NASA engineers described as \u201cseven minutes of terror.\u201d The vehicle descended through Mars\u2019 atmosphere, decelerating from 13,000 mph to a dead stop while the mission\u2019s team of engineers were able to do nothing more than look on and hope for the best.<\/p>\n

And when the $2.5-billion vehicle landed successfully, UCF was on board.<\/p>\n

\n

NASA\u2019s Go-To Guy<\/h3>\n

\u201cI expected it to work, so I was pretty calm about the whole thing,\u201d says Dr. Daniel Britt, UCF physics professor and inventor of the color calibration targets that reside on theCuriosity<\/em>\u00a0rover. \u201cI looked forward to seeing where it would end up and what it would look like \u2026 and I wasn\u2019t disappointed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Britt\u2019s color calibration products are the key to making the color in the images shot by the\u00a0Curiosity<\/em>\u00a0rover\u2019s cameras precise, balanced and recognizable relative to how we see color on Earth.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see color as light going through an oxygen atmosphere at normal temperature and pressure,\u201d Britt explains. \u201cTo understand color on another planet\u2014viewing things through an atmosphere with alien temperatures, less pressure, half again as far from the sun\u2014we need a reference, a chip that tells us what blue is, what red is, what green is. When [scientists] take a picture on Mars of the calibration target and then take a picture of something else, they can back out what blue is supposed to look like so it makes sense to us. It\u2019s a color reference chart.\u201d<\/p>\n

While his work on\u00a0Curiosity<\/em>\u00a0has captured significant attention, Britt says Mars hasn\u2019t always been his primary focus. \u201cI went to grad school at Brown because I wanted to work on planetary exploration and asteroids,\u201d he says. \u201cMars is a sideline.\u201d<\/p>\n

A sideline, perhaps, but Britt has played an important role in just about all of NASA\u2019s Mars missions over the past 15 years, serving as the project manager for the camera on the Mars\u00a0Pathfinder<\/em>, and providing calibration targets on the\u00a0Spirit<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Opportunity<\/em>rovers, and the\u00a0Phoenix<\/em>\u00a0lander.<\/p>\n

Regarding the calibration targets, for which he has become the go-to guy, Britt says simply, \u201cI\u2019ve got the space-qualified design, which has gone through vibration, thermal, vacuum, radiation and UV testing. And once you go through all this, it becomes a half million-dollar project\u2014$10,000 to make the target and a half million for testing. So now it\u2019s cheaper for NASA or the instrument makers to call me and say, \u2018Dan, can you make this for us?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

If It Were Easy, Everybody Would Do It<\/h3>\n

To become a successful interplanetary scientist, learning to navigate the solar system is only one of the challenges. You must also learn how to navigate the bureaucracy of NASA.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is it like working with NASA?\u201d Britt asks rhetorically. \u201cWell, if it were easy, everybody would do it. It has its own frustrations and rewards. But if you\u2019re using public money, that\u2019s just part of the landscape. They\u2019re trying to balance what they think is an interesting planetary program with the money Congress gives them. They are fairly generous, allocating more money than the National Science Foundation, for example. Compared to a lot of space nations, we\u2019re doing okay.\u201d<\/p>\n

And what would he want if he made the rules? Britt doesn\u2019t hesitate. \u201cI would like the taxpayers to give me half a billion dollars so I could collect samples from the Martian moons.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe moons collect debris, sediment and other particles tossed off by Mars that trace back to the earliest days. The same particles are now buried deep on Mars, but I believe they are retrievable on the surface of the moons.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe could bring samples back to Earth and analyze them grain by grain to learn, for example, how warm and hospitable Mars may once have been.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe moons collect debris, sediment and other particles tossed off by Mars that trace back to the earliest days. The same particles are now buried deep on Mars, but I believe they are retrievable on the surface of the moons.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe could bring samples back to Earth and analyze them grain by grain to learn, for example, how warm and hospitable Mars may once have been.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

If You Think You\u2019re Right, You\u2019re Probably Wrong<\/h3>\n

With the success of his work, Britt seems like the right person for young scientists to turn to for career advice. And indeed, his advice is simple.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re the kind of person who worries about being wrong, you\u2019re in the wrong profession,\u201d he says. \u201cWe [planetary scientists] learn new stuff all the time. Reality keeps challenging our assumptions. As an explorer, you\u2019re trying to discover the reality, just like Columbus. He was dead wrong about his assumptions, but he discovered two new continents.\u201d<\/p>\n

Being wrong is, in fact, the very thing that motivates Britt to go to work every day. \u201cWe thought we knew a whole lot about the solar system 20 years ago,\u201d he says, \u201cbut we were wrong. What gets me excited about the work I do in space science is that this is a big solar system, and we\u2019ve only scratched the surface. There\u2019s something new to be learned all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In August 2012, NASA\u2019s\u00a0Curiosity\u00a0rover landed on Mars, following an eight-month flight and what NASA engineers described as \u201cseven minutes of terror.\u201d The vehicle descended through Mars\u2019 atmosphere, decelerating from 13,000 mph to a dead stop while the mission\u2019s team of engineers were able to do nothing more than look on and hope for the best. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":5613,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[38,13,14],"tags":[843],"class_list":["post-5600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-news","category-physics-departments","tag-daniel-britt"],"yoast_head":"\nVisual cues help earthling search the alien planet - College of Sciences News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sciences.ucf.edu\/news\/visual-cues-help-earthling-search-the-alien-planet\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Visual cues help earthling search the alien planet - College of Sciences News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In August 2012, NASA\u2019s\u00a0Curiosity\u00a0rover landed on Mars, following an eight-month flight and what NASA engineers described as \u201cseven minutes of terror.\u201d The vehicle descended through Mars\u2019 atmosphere, decelerating from 13,000 mph to a dead stop while the mission\u2019s team of engineers were able to do nothing more than look on and hope for the best. 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