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Pictures of Mars

"I wanted it to have a little personality," Peter says. The camera would be the first to offer stereo resolution and create three-dimensional anaglyphs of the Martian terrain. That’s right, 3D space images more than two decades before Avatar. Take that, James Cameron!

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Pictures of Mars

The SSI functions as the eyes of Phoenix. It takes the pretty postcard pictures you might see on the Internet. The design is based on Peter’s famous stereo-imager built for the Pathfinder mission. That was the first Mars camera to use a Charge Coupled Device (CCD) like you’d find on your digital camera at home. Since then, it’s had a few upgrades but it’s still your classic Mars imager.

For eight to ten million space bucks, Peter will build you one too. The SSI has precisely manufactured glass lenses and flawless resolution. Situated atop a large mast, SSI will provide images at a height of up to two meters above the ground, roughly the height of a “tall” person. The two lenses on SSI simulate the human eye, creating three-dimensional stereo vision. It’s loaded with all kinds of filters to create images in various regions of the light spectrum. These filters will help the team figure out what they’re looking at, whether the reflective object they see might be ice or just some shiny bits of rock.

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