How and why digital imaging rose in outer space.

1. Digital Imaging in Space

2. Christian Sandström holds a PhD from Chalmers
University of Technology, Sweden. He writes and speaks
about disruptive innovation and technological change.

3. This is the first image ever transmitted
from Mars and back home to earth.

4. Some of the first applications of
digital imaging back in the
1970s were used in outer space.

6. The Viking Lander 1 took the
first picture from the surface of
Mars on July 20 1976.

9. After an 11 month
journey, it could
finally land in the
region called
Chryse Planitia.

12. The Viking Lander 1 took the first picture from
the surface of Mars on July 20 1976.

15. About 4500 images were taken and many of
them are so good they’re still used today.

16. Well, it couldn’t be a
Hasselblad this time.
(Photo taken at the
Nasa space center in
Huntsville, Alabama)

17. But what cameras were used?
A film camera required people and besides,
the film needed to be brought back.

18. As the Viking Lander was not going to return
to earth, a different technology was needed.

19. In order to send the images back to
earth, the photos needed to be digital.

20. Back in those days, the image sensor
(CCD) had just been invented and the
quality was still poor.

21. Therefore, a kind of scanning technique was used.

22. A photodiode was used. It is a kind of photodetector
that can convert light into current or voltage.

23. The ’camera’ had a rotating tube with a mirror going
up and down, sending a continuous stream of
light down to an array of 12 pixels.

24. So each picture was built up continuously,
row by row and eventually, a pretty good
image had been constructed.

25. That’s how the first iconic photos of Mars
were taken using digital imaging.

26. Interestingly, some of the early drawbacks of
digital imaging have created an incorrect
idea about the colours of Mars.

27. When light goes through various colour
filters, an inaccurate image may be created.

28. Therefore, many of those images had an
excessive orange nuance.

29. And when the images came back to earth,
there was simply no time to correct this.

30. Needless to say, the images were quickly
distributed all over the world.

31. Terry Pratchett once said something like ‘the
lie has come halfway around the planet
before the truth has puts on its shoes’.

32. So the myth survives, and lives on.

33. The photos of Mars can serve as an
illustration of the early drawbacks of digital
imaging and the shortcomings of society.

34. Apart from the minor shortcomings
of digital imaging, the Viking
Lander was very successful.

35. The Lander exceeded its lifetime
with some 90 days and worked for
about six years.

36. It’s interesting to see how the first
applications of digital imaging
were in fact very advanced.

37. This seems to be the case with
most digital technologies.

38. The first
electronic
calculators
were called
scientific
calculators,
and were only
used in very
extreme
settings, such
as NASA and
different
military
applications.

39. The first
transistor
radio
technology
back in the
early 1950s
was primarily
used in the
US Military.

40. Given that digital technology is initially
very expensive it has often been
nurtured in these kind of segments
which are not senstitive to the price tag.

41. In addition to this, it has often brought in
new performance attributes that were
crucial in this particular application (like
the cameras used on Mars).

42. As the price
went down over
time and the
performance
increased, these
products
reached the
mass markets
later on.

43. Today, we have
much more
pixels in a simple
point and shoot
camera than
NASA had when
exploring space
in the 1970s.

45. Sources
Larry Perkins
Discovery Blog
Wikipedia

46. Image attributions

47. Find out more:
www.christiansandstrom.org