Mars Colour Camera

MARS COLOR CAMERA:

MCC (Mars Color Camera)

     Mars Color Camera (MCC) operates in visible range of 0.4 to 0.7 micrometer and uses RGB pattern. Its IGFOV varies from 19.5 m to 4 km.The detector array has 2048x2048 elements on a pixel pitch of 5.5 micro. The Sensor is driven by a custom built electronics designed around the detector. MCC is among five science payloads onboard MOM. It has 16 different modes of exposures, aimed at imaging the Mars Surface with moderate scientific objectives.

AIMED OBJECTIVES:

• Surface features : To Image the Surface features of Mars with varying resolution and scales using the unique elliptical orbit. This includes the craters, mountains, valleys, sedimentary features, volcanic features, rift valleys, mega faults etc.. on the surface of the Mars
• Methane Source : To map the geological setting of area around Methane sources picked up by the fellow sensor onboard MOM, the MSM (Methane Sensor for Mars) 
• Polar Ice Caps : To map Martian Polar ice Caps and its seasonal variations
• Dust Devils : To monitor dynamic behaviour of the dust devils and dust storms over six months
• Exo-Mars Studies : Besides Mars, there will be attempt for opportunistic imaging of phobos and comet during the elliptical orbit around Mars
• Context Information : One of the most important task of MCC is to provide contextual information for other science payload onboard MOM. This will help interpret the science from the other sensors in a better way. Due to highly dynamic nature of Martian atmosphere and surface, every mission needs to carry its own imaging camera and hence Mars Color Camera.

DATA PRODUCT SCHEMA:

     An MCC image is a Bayer filter mosaic, a color filter array (CFA) for arranging RGB color filters on a square grid of photo sensors. The demosaicing algorithm is employed to reconstruct a full color image. Level-1 product (calibrated data) generation involves detector wise photo response non-uniformity model correction as understood from pre-launch laboratory calibration exercises. line/pixels loss correction and tagging the geographic coordinates to each pixel. level-1 corrected are generated for users. The software pipeline produces calibrated data to generate minimum Planetary Data System (PDS) compliance product.

TESTING: 

The first photograph was taken on 19th November 2013 at 08:20 UTC from an altitude of 67,975 km with 3.5 km spatial resolution, swath 7,240 km and 0.4 msec integration time.

 Another imaging session over the Sahara desert was carried out on 23rd November 2013 at 09:00 UTC from an altitude of 18,746 km. The spatial resolution was 0.91km.