Amazing Sharper View of MSL Hanging by its Parachute

I have to steal a phrase from Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer, who earlier this week said something like, “Things just can’t keep getting more cool all the time, right?”

Well, apparently they can. Here’s a sharpened view from HiRISE of the Mars Science Laboratory descending to Mars on a parachute. It shows greater detail of the parachute and even MSL itself.

Just wow.

The original image cropped image:

The HiRISE team describes how they sharpened the image: “This image was given special processing by members of the HiRISE Team, that included removing detector noise and optical blur. The sharpening was achieved by converting the image to its frequency components, correcting for the minor blur that was characterized by pre-flight laboratory measurements, and converting back.”

All I know is that it’s awesome.

See our article on the original image and how the team captured it.

See more details at the HiRISE website.