bring martian surface
'Computer vision' brings Martian surface into stunning relief
The idea of enhancing an image digitally to reveal previously unseen levels of detail has become something of a sci-fi movie cliché. Now, astronomers at University College London have used a similar computer vision technique to learn more about the location of the missing Beagle 2 probe on the surface of Mars. A paper on the novel "stacking and matching" technique, which allows researchers to pick out objects at a resolution of up to five times greater than the original images, was published in the journal Planetary and Space Science in February. But just recently, the UCL researchers began using the technique, called Super-Resolution Restoration (SRR), to identify individual objects on the red planet's surface. "We now have the equivalent of drone-eye vision anywhere on the surface of Mars where there are enough clear repeat pictures," Jan-Peter Muller of UCL's Mullard Space Science Laboratory says in a press release.