1/8/2024 0 Comments The face of mars cprdonatesIt’s impractical to repeat the planet-wide mapping process by hand every time we need to map a new feature. Finally, craters are only one of many interesting surface features. For craters that are significantly eroded or obscured, it’s hard to quantitatively instruct a person to be more or less conservative when mapping. Second, existing mapping efforts are difficult to replicate as human mappers are unlikely to generate the same crater map twice. First, the manual mapping process doesn’t scale well - crater count increases approximately exponentially with decreasing crater diameter (Robbins and Hynek, 2012). Human mapping at this scale is also prone to limitations. By the time a multi-year mapping effort is completed, it’s in danger of being out of date. This crater map was a major contribution to the scientific community, but Mars is a dynamic planet and our maps need to be dynamic as well. The planet-wide Robbins Crater Database (built using THEMIS daytime imagery at 100 m/pixel) contains 384,343 craters ( Robbins and Hynek, 2012) and took about 4 years to complete. The current best crater map was created by hand and only includes craters with diameters ≥ 1 km. Our initial results suggest that by using this pipeline, we can reduce the time and cost of mapping Martian surface features by several orders of magnitude. We are working with ASU-based Mars experts Hannah Kerner and Tanya Harrison to build a machine learning pipeline that can detect these features on a planetary scale. Many surface features (e.g., craters, dunes, gullies, recurring slope lineae, etc.) are important to map for human and scientific exploration. We have the tools to make sure that the lack of an accurate map isn’t one of them. The first humans that venture to Mars will face ever-present hazards threatening their survival. Maps were so rare and valuable that explorers would employ spies to steal this geospatial information from rival nations. Motivationįor much of history, explorers left home not knowing what they would encounter. With assistance from Artificial Intelligence (AI), we can bring down the planet-wide mapping process from years to weeks. Collaborating with researchers at Arizona State University, we used the YOLO deep learning architecture to autonomously detect surface features (here, craters) faster and at much finer scales. Current feature maps for Mars are created by hand and therefore only include large features. The exploration of Mars will require precise maps. Thankfully, new technology has nearly eradicated the diseased thinking spread by UFO junkies.This blog post coincides with research that we’re presenting at the American Geophysical Union Conference on Dec 13th, 2018. Click here for comparison photos.Īll conspiracy theories aside, the face on Mars had many scientists intrigued for a while, trying to determine what had created the illusion. The shadows that seem to be the facial features nearly disappear in high resolution imagery. More recent images from the Mars Global Surveyor and other spacecraft have shown that the face on Mars is nothing other than a hill. Unfortunately, it took many years to develop the technology to image the mesa more clearly, so these crackpots had plenty of time to spread their poisoned opinions. Some even went so far as to believe that the Martians formed the face to communicate with a less developed human race. Of course, UFO buffs(read fools here, please) jumped on the images as evidence that there was a past culture on the planet. The mesa has a few higher areas where you would expect to see human features and the mind fills in the blanks. Common examples include seeing animals or faces in clouds or the Virgin Mary in a pancake. Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon where a vague and random image is perceived as significant. ![]() The meas seems appears to be a face because of an optical illusion called pareidolia. This is an area where the heavily bombarded southern hemisphere begins to transition into the smooth, relatively uncratered north. The face is located among a few craters in the area, specifically about half-way between Arandus Crater and Bamberg Crater. The Cydonia area of the northern hemisphere of Mars includes: Cydonia Mensae, which is an area of flat-topped mesa-like features, Cydonia Colles, which is an area of hills, and Cydonia Labyrinthus, a group of intersecting valleys. ![]() The original images were dismissed, but were reconsidered when a second set of images from a different angle showed the same face. These images are from an area known as the Cydonia Mensae. A few of those images contained what is now known as ”the face on Mars”. ![]() In June of 1976, NASA’s Viking 1 mission began sending back images from the Martian surface.
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