JPL Will Only Release A Few "Interesting" JunoCam Images
Keith’s 4 July note: At a press briefing today Juno PI Scott Bolton said that they will turn on JunoCam once Juno is in orbit and may release a few “interesting” images. No word when this will happen. What is really odd about this is that JPL missions such as Cassini have been posting raw imagery online almost as soon as they get it for more than a decade. MSL has also been posting raw images since it landed. Mars landing missions have been sending back images in real time for everyone to see in real time since the days of Spirit and Opportunity. Yea its scary to risk failing in real time but NASA has done this many times before. It is understandable that the camera won’t be activated for a while as the spacecraft is checked out. But once the images start heading back to Earth why not let everyone see them? This decision to sit on them is especially odd since JunoCam was added to the mission as an education and public outreach effort. Baffling.
Keith’s 5 July update: There was a post-JOI press briefing at 1:00 am EDT. When directly asked about his earlier comment wherein he said that the Juno team might release some “interesting” JunoCam images Scott Bolton passed on a chance to clarify what he will or will not release by saying that “all images are interesting”. Sigh. Yet another NASA mission PI who can’t answer a simple direct question about releasing information to the public.
How to Get to Mars: Q&A With NASA Deputy Administrator Dava Newman, PC Magazine
“[Dava Newman] We have something called the Juno-cam, which will send take high-def images and the public will help decide what images to capture. As long as we’re in orbit, we’re going to say, “Okay,” to the public, “where do you want it? Help us explore.” We really want to take people with us to Jupiter, and I think that’s the best way to do it. It’s a huge experiment in citizen science, so you can tell us where you want to look on Jupiter and we’ll point the camera.”
Last Image Of Jovian System Before Juno Arrives
|
|
|
|
NASA seems to want to shoot themselves in the foot these days. Negative press is abounding on why NASA won’t release RAW images. Are they afraid we will see something we shouldn’t.
Shades of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Is this the equivalent of the spaceship Jupiter mission in the movie 2001 that was sent in secrecy because they discovered something mind boggling?
Too much secrecy! If it fails, it fails. Holding back imagery won’t change the fact that JUNO failed, if it does. We, the U.S. Citizens paid for the pics, time to put up or let NASA grovel for the next appropriation.
Writing my Senators, Congressman and President. This is WRONG on so many levels.
“Jupiter mission in the movie 2001 that was sent in secrecy “
In the book 2010, Clarke wrote USAA finally released the truth of that mission. After awhile general public got bored with this monolith orbiting Jupiter and attention then went elsewhere.
Other than that they probably could release some images immediately, however, they may look “photoshopped” like raw Cassini images that have all kinds of optic lens anomalies. I remember seeing one of those and it looks “fake” unlike back in the Voyager days anything from those images was something not even the best in Hollywood could create.
Or it could be the mindset of people these days. Recording video of parades and events, there are people that will say “oh no! Don’t do that, you may get sued because you didn’t get waivers and permissions.” Geez, back in the days problems video guys had were everyone jumping in front of camera so they can get on the news with their “hi mom!” moment.
We’ve been on this road many times – releasing data in a timely manner.
I wonder just how many times Keith must beat this drum?
Until the PIs wake up.
Sounds like someone, a pi for instance, wants to put imagery behind a paywall for personal gain.
This smacks of the, now commonplace, coverup and obfuscation of the current Obama administration. U.S. Taxpayers paid for the images and other data and. like other missions preceding this one (Cassini, New Horizons, Dawn, etc) the RAW data should be posted as soon as it arrives. This is such an insult to U.S. Taxpayers. What are the JUNO team trying to hide? Incompetence, A money grab, what?
Chill out “Neville”. This stuff happened with equal frequency under Bush too. In fact, more so.
Should never happen.
For what it’s worth, Mars & Moon missions put out raw products (as JPGs) essentially as soon as they are received.
I get it that mission PIs have spent years developing the instruments and thereby earn their first looks. But at this point in jovian system knowledge — post Voyager 1 and 2, and Galileo — I find it hard to see why raw JPGs can’t be released as they come in. Little or no science analysis will be done using JPGs.
That’s not or at least much less the point with JunoCam, since there is no large science team in the professional JunoCam team. Most of them are technical staff, with only few scientists. Those are neither able nor expected to do all the possible science with JunoCam. Instead there are professional and amateur (citizen) scientists outside the “core” team, expected to work with the JunoCam images. This includes students.
Only taking images of Jupiter’s poles is a predefined science goal. Other targets are mainly subject to the public. But some technical testing, calibration runs etc. will be performed according to decisions of the professional “core” team.
Other than pictures, the raw data from Curiosity and other missions are rarely, if ever, made openly and freely available to the general public. Anyone with the required academic credentials can get access to the data if they need to, though usually after a few months where the primary science team works with the data.
The primary science teams do get first crack at the data, that’s only natural. They are the ones who are most familiar with the instrumentation and who know what the data should represent compared to what they’re expecting.
Agreed you need to chill out. This is pretty much SOP for NASA missions.
Actually, all the data ends up being publicly available (or, at least, it is supposed to.) Anyone can download it from the Planetary Data System. As you say, there is a calibration/validation period. Depending on the mission, that could mean a three to nine month delay. But you don’t need to show any academic credentials. Of course, making sense of the data might take some specialized knowledge.
Wow, that’s a heck of a catalog! I didn’t know it existed, and clearly I need to rescind my earlier statement. You’re right that specialized data processing programs and knowledge would be needed to view and (especially) to understand the data.
I know current data on Curiosity (the mission I keep closest tabs on) needs credentials to get at, on this Planetary Data System MSL / Curiosity only has camera and spectrometer data available. Or at least that’s what is listed, other data set locations may not be entered into that system yet.
All the Curiosity data should be on the PDS. Sometimes an instrument’s raw data isn’t there, but only if the calibrated version is (and there is some pressure to put both in.) But I’m afraid one of the most common criticisms of the PDS is organization; sometimes it can be very hard to find a particular data set.
It’s worth mentioning that much of the data analysis isn’t funded out of missions’ budgets. Quite a bit is funded through NASA data analysis grants. Anyone can propose to these programs, they are typically $125k per year for three years, _and_ can only find work on publicly available data. If you don’t archive it publicly, this source of funding is not available.
I also suspect, as with Dawn, some scientists are putting their career enhancing publications ahead of serving the public that paid for the mission. So they will toss a bit of eye candy to the taxpayers and horde the interesting images for their own personal use in the articles they are writing. And yes, this is not new, it is just that the new world of social media and expectations of instant sharing of knowledge makes it more apparent as a conflict of interests.
This is really an element of the NASA science culture that needs to be addressed. American taxpayers, not the science journals, are paying for this mission. Congress needs to make that clear to NASA and ban such publication embargo of NASA information. If the current generation of PI are not happy with that I am sure their are plenty of others that will gladly take their place and be willing to work with NASA to serve the public.
The “we paid for it” argument is old, tiresome, and easily explained as the need for project scientists to publish the data they’ve waited 5 long years to reap; careers at least in part on hold.
And the “we paid for it” argument reflects an ill-informed, indeed arrogant attitude towards the people ‘we’ hire to do this kind of research. A delay in the data is simply part of the deal we make to attract the world’s best and brightest, for which I am grateful.
This is seems like a worthwhile point.
However, isn’t JunoCam a fairly simple device (just 1600×1200 pixels), added for the purposes of education outreach and PR, not part of the actual science package on the craft?
Also, given what you say, why is it that a long list of US-flown craft have published their raw images nearly immediately? Are we to infer that the Mars rover teams have all been scooped on their own discoveries, that their careers are in ruins due to a lack of exclusive access to the data from these missions?
I’m not aware of there being deleterious effects on the work of the science teams, which would seem to undermine the argument that restricting access is both reasonable and necessary.
What do some missions do it and others don’t? Because NASA lets PIs get away with it.
I suspect the journals would not publish work based on those initial raw images. Until the data goes into the Planetary Data System, it is officially considered uncalibrated and not validated by the instrument team.
There was one case on Galileo, where someone presented analysis of press-release images at a conference. The instrument team was not happy (especially since the analysis was wrong.) I also know of a Cassini observation that ended up being cleaned up and turned into a fantastic movie. That was done by an amateur who posted it on utube within a week of the bits hitting the ground. The instrument team’s plans for a press release were delayed by a couple months. Since the movie was already out there, they had to do enough additional processing and analysis to have a new and newsworthy result.
So the amateur basically forced them to up their game and do better quality work on the video they did. I don’t see a problem with that, it shows the value of amateurs in pushing the professionals to do better work.
The assumption, that JunoCam is a fairly simple device isn’t true. Therefore the premature conclusions.
Junocam sits on a spacecraft which is spinning with 2 rpm. It is compensating for this with a technique called time delay integration (TDI).
Only up to 4 times 1648×128 pixels are read out of the 1648×1200 CCD matrix. There are color filters on the monochrome CCD. You need to colorize and stitch together these stripes appropriately to get a color image.
I work on these types of missions but I’m a taxpayer first. People should see the data as raw images. “We paid for it” may be an old argument but that doesn’t make it any less valid. The reality is planetary scientists get some _really_ expensive things to play with because we have a public that is willing to fund them because space is cool. Contrast that to many other scientists (oceanographers come to mind) who struggle to get any public funding and I think the least we can do is get the data to the public.
Just the reply I expected but look at it from a ethical perspective. Imagine a non-NASA government employee/contractor withholding information generated with taxpayer funding from the public while they shop it around to get the best price among private groups for their personal gain. I am sure you would be outraged, and well you should be as that is counter to both tradition and law that public servants are there to serve the public not themselves. Yet this is exactly the behavior you are defending, public servants withholding information in order to shop it around (submitting articles) to get the best price (most prestigious journal publication) for personal gain.
Of course their partners in crime are the private journals seeking to maximize revenues from an outdated and declining business model, forcing taxpayers to pay a second time for information their tax dollars already paid for. Such journals were an important tool in the 19th and 20th Century but are just a relic from the past in today’s network world. There are much better ways to share scientific discoveries these days.
Pity scientists and their journals are so resistant to being part of the modern world. Is it any wonder support for science seems to be declining as the public is increasingly excluded from being part of the discovery process? No, this subject is just begging for a Congressional Hearing to illuminate.
Also I am not impressed with your belief that NASA will lose the “best and the brightest” if they require them to
conform to the same behavior expected of other public servants. There is a glut of qualified Ph.D.s in Physics and similar fields. NASA would have no trouble replacing the researchers lost with other Ph.D.s who would be able, and grateful, to actually work in their field.
https://www.aip.org/statist…
“The percentage of new physics PhD recipients accepting potentially permanent positions has increased over the last 4 years, reaching its highest point (40%) since the class of 2002. Reflecting this change, the proportion of degree recipients accepting postdoctoral fellowships has been declining.”
Imagine, bragging that 4 out of 10 Ph.D.s in Physics are finding real work in their field… No, NASA would have its choice of replacement researchers, but it wouldn’t need to replace them as the current ones won’t leave given the lack of employment opportunities in a specialty like planetary
science.
I find myself wavering on this issue.
However: “Imagine a non-NASA government employee/contractor withholding information generated with taxpayer funding from the public while they shop it around to get the best price among private groups for their personal gain.”
Would you allow that the exploitation of initial data is actually part of the payment provided to the science team?
That comes very close to the tradition in other cultures that part of the compensation a public servant receives is what they are able to get out of the members of the public they “serve”. That is why “bribes” are considered acceptable in some cultures, they are seen as being part of the pay for the customs official or regulator.
Is that a route you think NASA should be going down? And if so why should NASA employees and/or contractors be treated differently than other government agencies?
As I noted before, there is a better solution, one in line with both the modern world and the traditions of science. That is replacing publication in private journals with publication on a NASA research journal website. The articles could be peer-reviewed just as with private journals. Instead of benefiting private journals it would benefit NASA by making it easier to highlight the quality and quantity of research done by NASA.
That would also eliminate the embargo requirements which are a main element of the problem. In addition, since it wouldn’t be behind a pay wall it would serve much better the scientific requirement of open sharing of knowledge (also part of the OST by the way). It would also be a logical extension of NASA and NACA publications of aerospace research results.
There’s a conflation of arguments here: the issue of whether or not the big mags should or should not wield the authority they do is separate, though linked.
And the comparison with bribes? Are you seriously making that comparison? Is paying a cop $50 the same as offering a PI a few months’ use of data in return for generating and interpreting the data?
Payment can come in many forms, and as long as it is in the open and understood by both sides it is hardly corrupt or coercive.
Scientists work in a milieu not clearly understood by others, an environment in which timing of discovery is everything. And while I’m not unsympathetic to the argument you are making, the science team’s interests in exclusivity as part of compensation should be protected.
Actually you support well my argument of it being a culture of self-service rather than public service. In nations where payment to officials (bribes) are considered part of the compensation it is accepted as “moral” compensation for their work. This used to be the case in many European countries before and just after WW II. But morals evolve over time and what was considered acceptable at one time is considered
unacceptable now. This is what we are seeing now with the moral issue of some planetary
scientists withholding data for personal gain.
And the journals are a big part of the problem as they are the ones offering the motive in order to generate revenue to close their relict business models. Folks wouldn’t be upset about researchers publishing for personal gain if the journals were not forcing them to withhold the information so they are able to place it behind pay walls for their benefit. The Dawn mission was a good example, folks were excited and
wanted to see what those bright areas were but had to wait for months until the article was published That is really the key issue since it is causing the researchers to put their self-interest above their responsibilities as a public servant.
So much FUD here it’s hard to know where to start. For starters, that “payoff” in terms of papers is part of the deal made when the science teams were formed and the PI-ships created. It’s literally a payment in-kind for taking on career-killing risk, and it is part of the negotiation made when the mission moves forward. The fact is those science teams have close to zero paper productivity during the 5-10 years prior to the mission, and for better or worse paper production is the primary metric used for getting and holding academic positions. Without the payoff their careers are literally over, their chance of jumping into academia and tenured positions is essentially zero. NASA is not considered a prestigious alternative to academia, it is generally seen by academics (who control much of the system) as a second-fiddle consolation prize. That’s just reality. I’ve had the joy of being on a failed science mission and watch my career plans go up in smoke. It’s great, let me tell you.
Second, we overproduce PhDs like crazy, specifically relative to the number of positions. In astronomy that overproduction is greater than a factor of 10. Very few students make the transition past post-doc, and almost all students take 2-3 post-docs before ever seeing something like a permanent job, typically in their mid- to late- 30s. Yes, final employment for physics PhDs is high, but it’s actually very low for the total number in research, which is what they almost all actually wanted to do.
But finally, what are you going to do, replace a PI with a fresh post-doc? How well is that going to work? In general, there are only a handful of people on Earth that can actually do those jobs. It is very, very hard to fill positions with qualified people.
The scientists working with Japan’s Xray observatory learned this lesson in a very hard way.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans put their careers, and lives, on hold to serve their country. What do you think military service is all about? Why should planetary scientists get a special deal? What makes them more special than the tens of thousands of other Americans that
serve their nation? Although from your arguments it would seem planetary scientists are just out to serve themselves and not their nation.
Speaking of serving themselves, I trust you saw the thread Keith posted about the Juno PI’s getting more money than the President. That doesn’t sound like a career sacrifice to me 🙂
And spare me the arguments about the planetary scientists working on them being the best and brightest. That is just arrogance. The military and industry have no problems finding individuals to design, build and manage far more complex systems. Or are you claiming that the Juno spacecraft is more complex than an attack submarine or a modern commercial airliner?
The cutting edge of robotic systems aren’t on Mars, they are working in mines or performing military missions.
This mission has been continuously defined as a non-imaging mission. And the camera JunoCam is touted as a non-scientific, “public” camera.
However, we live in the times of instant downloads, of instant gratification. Because we’re talking about a non-scientific camera, there’s no particular reason to delay the release of the photos.
There is a seriously strange disconnect here. I hate asking this question, but is the Wikipedia entry about JunoCam correct? Even looking at the references, what I’m getting is that the cam is a “publicity add-on” that is restricted to 10-1000 photos per orbit (restricted due to 40MB of reserved transmission time). Probably no moon shots at that.
…and they can’t spare the time or server space to post raw images…
Kinda smacks of the same mindset as a line remembered from Pop Fisher in “The Natural”.. “You can put him on my team; doesn’t mean I have to play him.”.
That’s an accurate description of the instrument. I don’t know about their budget. It might be interesting to see the mission’s science data plan. That should specify all the details of how science data will be distributed. It ought to cover JunoCam, but those documents don’t typically cover non-science telemetry.
So its just a “bone” tossed to the public? Something the science team was forced to do? That would explain a lot. As usual with NASA, the taxpayers paying for the mission are the least important priority.
As for time and server space, if the shortage of both is the problem I am sure there are folks that would donate both to help NASA out.
As of the time I’m posting this, the Wikipedia article about JunoCam is very rudimentary, in parts wrong, and in parts obsolete. This paper is much better: http://link.springer.com/ar…
But the paper is obslolete regarding the imaging planning, since Juno’s orbits have been revised in the meantime.
Observation planning will be adjusted for each orbit. It’s up to the public to vote for features on Jupiter to be imaged, within technical constraints and actual features accessible to JunoCam.
See mission page, again:
https://www.missionjuno.swr…
Data should be free to everyone after brief calibration period. It seems like some in the science community do not think the citizen scientist are capable. If scientist have spent years with their career on hold then they are in the best position to develop conclusions why fear the the people who paid for it. Data embargoes feel like a lazy escape. We owe it to ourselves to hold ourselves to higher standards
Keith I was wondering if you have any theories on why this happens? Do you buy the “save the science for personal gain” theory? Or are there any other agenda’s in play? Also how often do these PAO’s /PIO’s do this to you? Is your reporting (much of with, I personally appreciate) creating problems with access?
I would hope not!!
I do believe in this age of limited budget’s N.W. and you have done some great albeit tough stuff! someone has to have a voice its a lot of money $1.1+ Billion great science but a lot of money…
Arrogance.
Petition to release the pics!
https://www.change.org/p/u-…
The raw images aren’t paywalled. They are either free, or not yet publicly accessible at all.
but they are being embargoed. LIkely to be held back until only the PI publish the fantastic pics to establish their bonafides and make their career. This is nothing about transparency and all about power and glory. This kind of crap must be stopped. If these investigators are preeminent in their field, they will get there first with conclusions. If not, well, they deserve to wilt in the dust.
I’d think, that it’s different with Junocam. The Earth flyby images were published immediately after downlink, even before they have been decrypted completely.
I’ve seen more than 100 cruise images. But they show only stars, stray light, and hot pixels. You didn’t miss much. Those images are useful for calibration purposes, but it’s nothing fantastic.
The first fantastic images of Jupiter are scheduled for end of August, and downlinked shortly after, maybe the first days of Septermber, if everything goes well. But consider, that this will be a test run; so not everything may be perfect.
If I hopefully get access to the raw images then, I’ll try to process them as fast as possible, and make them publicly available. There is also a standard processing pipeline at MSSS, even if raw images won’t be published immediately. Other members of the image processing community may release their work, too.
Routine publishing of new raw images is scheduled for the science mission starting in November.
Might be the mission team is ready to publish images of the first orbit, with images scheduled to be taken starting July 10, but I’ve no information about the exact publishing policy in July. If the images will be published, don’t expect too much: Jupiter will only be a small marble before end of August.
In the meanwhile, the best I can currently offer is this animation, rendered from the Earth flyby images, and the renditions you’ll find, if you follow the links below the animation:
http://www.planetary.org/mu…
Other Earth flyby renditions, see the official Mission Juno website:
https://www.missionjuno.swr…
Err. The instruments were turned off for orbital insertion. A JPL press release, which came out today (July 8), said that most of them have now been turned back on. Given the initial orbit, the observing geometry isn’t all that good for imaging. They also aren’t in constant contact with the spacecraft (now that the orbital insertion and post-insertion critical activities are finished.)
Given all that, how do you know that images are being embargoed? It’s quite likely they don’t have any images yet (after the approach images they have already released.)
I have to emphasize that the raw data is just plain not interesting to the public. Not sure about PDS, but I assume they follow the same policies as astrophysics and eventually everything is released via some archive. But the raw data are usually not even intelligible as images without substantial calibration and format conversion. The amount of support overhead is non-trivial having to hold the public’s hand and explain to them in gory detail how to make the data viewable on whatever whacky combination of Commodore-64 era machinery they happen to be using. It makes a whole lot more sense to pick a handful of things and let a professional team convert them into pretty public-consumption data products.
As for the pros, well there’s a huge issue in data calibration. And this isn’t just conjecture – I have seen some disasters when papers were written with calibration problems that resulted in the papers being wrong. Most missions have an IOC period during which nothing is released until all the calibration and pipelines have been checked out. Now I will admit I am not familiar with mission planning on planetary programs with long cruise phases, and if some of the in-flight checkout occurs during this time. With astrophysics it tends to be a huge rush for a few months right after launch.
Correct, the imagery is what the public gets to see (even though all of the data is “public domain”) but then we here have to correct folks who make the mistake of thinking that all that $1B+ probe is for is pretty pictures. There should be a nice, friendly, online index that the public can see and click and say, “Ick, too geeky for me”. Then they at least know that the data is there for them to use if they were smarter. It also means that students can do work from the data for essay and thesis without having to know something fancy about how to get to it.
On my list….
1) HiRes, close-up imagery of the poles.
2) Detailed spectography (and expert analysis) of the big red spot.
3) Spectrographic analysis of the banding from north to south.
Re: #1) So, how many are betting on whether Jupiter has a polygonal polar jet-stream formation? Long odds, but if it exists, consider my mind blown.
Now I say this with tongue firmly planted in cheek, but part of me has to wonder at the possibility that Saturn’s Great North Hexagon is the sign of a vastly superior alien intelligence saying: “Hi. We’ve been here. Please do not get too full of yourselves.”
Ditto.
There is probably still a telescope clearance sale ongoing…
I hope that the JunoCam release policy will be solved quickly. Fingers crossed!!!
Since I’m European, the situation is way way way worse here. I remember back in 2014 when we waited for the Rosetta images. Hours turned into days, days turned into weeks. People were angry. We asked and nothing happened. Luckily one of the Rosetta cameras (the NAVCAM) was used only for navigation purposes and wasn’t tied to a science team. ESA quickly forced NAVCAM images to be released, but we still had to wait for months to see some high-res OSIRIS photos.
And I wonder if the same debacle will repeat during the current ExoMars mission or the future BepiColombo mission. From the ExoMars website:
All science data taken by TGO and Schiaparelli will be made publicly
available after a 6-month proprietary period during which the science
teams will work on data calibration and analysis. Some images will be
made available earlier for communications and outreach purposes, on a
schedule to be agreed with the science team…
But they DO promise Schiaparelli images on time:
The images from the ESA-supplied DECA camera on Schiaparelli will be
made publicly available as soon as possible after they have been relayed
to Earth after the 19 October 2016 landing.
…
Different situation there. Typically ESA mission instruments are nationally funded and any embargo is put in place by ESA at the behest of the funding agency who claim prima nocta on the data. ESA tax payers as a block have no specific rights on the data beyond eventual access.
Not saying it is so but how about an alternative, generous, non nefarious scenario posit: Juno not primarily an imaging mission. Image data not prioritized for download. Thumbnail dump only from the DHS. Selective full scale images only prioritized for download based on thumbnail inspection. Hence only interesting images released….
Particles and fields and orbital data should be pretty light on resources compared to images, especially if you transmit your images on the way up from the close passes.We’re not talking about the MRO hosepipe here.
Maybe so but you are still paying by the bit from your ops budget..
And why should only “trained navy pilots” be allowed to fly carrier-based jets? My taxpayer dollars payed for all that! There are people lined up around the block who want to do it, it would be easy to replace those pilots.
🙂
The U.S. Navy will be glad to train you, just see your local recruiter 🙂
But I think you will find flying a Navy jet requires a lot more skill and knowledge than analyzing an astronomical image. But then the Galaxy Zoo is proof of that.
Sorry guys, but my family are Navy men going back four generations. More than one went to NASA after leaving the Navy. That post was called sarcasm – the point being that the “taxpayers” as a class are not equipped for the most part to use these things, it’s left to people with high degrees of training. You’re right, the spacecraft is less dangerous (in fact, zero danger after launch). But it’s much more expensive, and frankly much more difficult to build. The cost of JWST, as an extreme example, is greater than that of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. The people who work on it are ridiculously skilled. The scientists in the community are less so (I show my bias), and they in turn are way more trained than the taxpayers.
A typical astronomer or planetary scientist requires at least 10-15 years of post-college training to even start to do anything. That’s 5-7 years of graduate school, followed by one or two 2-3 year post-docs. And the science teams themselves are usually integral to construction of the science instruments. So now you’re talking more like 20-30 years of post-graduate experience specifically in space missions among the leadership. All the PIs of science instruments I know are typically close to retirement by flight. In fact, there’s a common community complaint that since NASA only selects (and the centers only put forward) missions with experienced people, it’s extremely difficult for younger people to get their foot in the door. It has been suggested to use the sounding rocket and balloon programs for that sort of thing, which is true to some degree.
As for Galaxy Zoo, well, that is what it is. Very few people “look” at images anymore in a science sense. Since the introduction of CCD devices in the mid-80s this has transitioned to being an incredibly data intensive, quantitative, mathematically driven science. The data products that come out of the science instruments are specifically for science – if pretty pictures can be made, it’s something of an afterthought, which is why it is left to a PR team. This isn’t just sending a bunch of jpegs. I have literally spent months arguing over the merits of data compression and simulating what each individual bit does in terms of downstream science.
The science/public split is one everyone is aware of. Most missions actually specifically schedule a handful of observations whose sole purpose is to make some pretty press release pictures to satisfy the public. That’s done because the mission planners know a priori that most of the science products are not of much public interest.
Sorry for disturbing the somewhat conspiracy-like discussion. But I missed an important part in this discussion: JunoCam doesn’t take picures as you may be used to from other missions. The raw data from JunoCam first need to be processed, before you can see anything else than scrambled stripes. This processing will be performed in parts by a small professional team, and by members of the public.
Thank you very much for your explanations and links. And for helping to dissipate the moral outrage expressed by some here.
Those of you, who are actually interested in working on raw JunoCam images may have a look at the files linked to by this website:
http://planetary.s3.amazona…
Start with the Earth flyby images beginning with 00C091, a RGB moon image. The IMG EDRs consist of binary data, each byte for one pixel, sorted by rows of 1648 pixels.
The raw images consist of framelets of height 128 pixels. Color images (identified by the “C” character in the filename) group three consecutive framelets (for red green and blue) to one subframe. There is a vertical space of 27 pixels between the RGB framelets within one subframe. Adjust for this gap. Then displace each subfame vertically by about 112 to 114 pixels, and combine the valid color channels to full RGB coverage. That way you’ll get a first draft of an RGB image. For high-quality results, however, you’ll need to consider the camera’s optical distortion, change of perspective, Juno’s trajectory, and planet rotation for geometry. Then apply some white balancing by defining appropriate weights to the colors.
At Jupiter be prepared for hot pixels and charged particle impacts, which may add noise to the images.
The RDRs are linearized images, with integers of 2 bytes (big endian) encoding one raw pixel.
The LBLs contain timing data. Those can be used to infer Juno’s trajectory and attitude from SPICE data.
I’m sure, that members of the public, able to process this kind of images, are welcome by the professional JunoCam team.
Here is the website, where raw and processed JunoCam images will be made available, beginning in November 2016 with the regular science mission. You’ll then be able to download images, process them, and upload them again:
https://www.missionjuno.swr…
The team and the leads will be motivated to release raw images the more members of the public, students, etc. are ready and willing to work with these images.
JunoCam is currently not considered a fully calibrated science instrument. It’s up to the public to enhance its value.
I suggest everyone call their congresspeople and demand they push a fully-funded outer planet mission equipped with imax stereoscopic cameras and the laser downlink required to bring the images down. And a fully-funded archive center to develop web and phone apps to view the data. Shouldn’t cost much more than $10B. Maybe half that since we’re not including a science program. Aim your efforts at the districts with NASA centers. And be sure to ask that it not derail the funding lines for everyone else, so you’ll need new funding. Say, 10 years for development, and you’re only talking augmenting NASA’s budget by a ballpark of a little under 10%. Easy, right?
I hope you succeed. Let me know what happens.
What I find odd is that the “best” images thus far released are from 48,000 miles away instead of from (approx.) 2400 miles above the cloud tops. From what I understand from listening to Candy Hansen, in its first iteration, Juno wasn’t even going to have an optical camera, but that it was added on chiefly as a public relations move, i.e, more public interest equals more public funding for planetary science. Given that to be the case, what possibly could the reason be to purposefully slow down the release of images? This is not Pluto we’re talking about here; Jupiter is nowhere near 4 light-hours from us and the transfer bit-rate if far superior to New Horizons. Also, I don’t buy that it is so that the scientists and investigators have time to review the images to see if they may be used as supporting (or sole) evidence for potential journal articles. So, we have two images released from twenty times farther out than perijove; no concrete public disclosure as to when there will be a data dump of remaining images–processed or not, and lack of credible information from the PI as to the reason for the slowdown. Now I am not saying, nor do I believe, that there is a conspiracy here, but could it be that the camera is just disappointing in its quality and they are trying to come up with a workaround? Let’s face it, the two images of both poles were not the greatest quality–and yes, I realize the spacecraft is spinning at a whopping 2 rpm.