JPEG2000 coming to you from Mars…
Friday, May 18th, 2007
Turns out that NASA has recently released new digital images of Mars from their Planetary Data System (PDS) and they are utilizing JPEG2000 to encode the data.
From the HIRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) blog:
“The solution for many NASA missions has been the development of the centralized Planetary Data System (PDS). The PDS is several things: a collection of websites, a search capability, an archive, a database, a learning tool, etc. The PDS Imaging Node is located at http://pds-imaging.jpl.nasa.gov/ and acts as “the curator of NASA’s primary digital image collections from past, present and future planetary missions.” These missions include Voyager, Galileo, Cassini, and many more. Now the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has been added to the list, with the HiRISE team releasing our first several months of image data.
What we have released is an archive of the HiRISE Experiment Data Records (EDRs) and Reduced Data Records (RDRs). EDRs are in the *.IMG file format and represent individual CCD channels (remember, there are 14 CCDs in the HiRISE camera and two channels per CCD, for a total of 28 channels). These EDRs are cleaned up, calibrated, stitched together, and mapped to Mars’ geometry, resulting in the RDR products. RDRs are in the *.JP2 and *.LBL formats. JPEG2000 is the technology that enables us to offer our gigantic images to the scientific community and the public in a timely and efficient manner. An observation’s image data are in the *.JP2 file and its meta data are in the detached *.LBL files. To view these products, JPEG2000 compatible software is required (see our site for a list of offerings)”.
Now you can see in realtime one of main the advantages of JPEG2000; image streaming. JPIP is the function within JPEG2000 that allows for the streaming the image data to the user as per their request(s) without the need to download the entire image. And when you’re dealing with images ~650MB each, only downloading the image data you’re interested in as opposed to all 650MB is a time saver indeed!
Try out the JPEG2000 viewer on the HiRise main site here and see for yourself if can find any little green men waiving back when the orbiter flew overhead! 