How do Spacecraft Photograph the Planets & get the Images Back to Earth?
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- Опубликовано: 19 июл 2024
- brilliant.org/CuriousDroid
Ever wondered how we can take those amazing images of the planets from spacecraft and get them back to earth for scientific study and just to see what they really look like.
Well in this video we do just that and see how they developed and some of the challenges they have to solve in order to do so.
This video is sponsored by Brilliant.org: brilliant.org/CuriousDroid
Presented by
Paul Shillito
Written & Researched
By Paul Shillito
Images and Footage
NASA, ESA, RosCosMos, historicspacecraft.com, Richard Kruse 
Наука
Your videos are great. No clickbait, no nonsense, unecesary fluff. It's all very concise, well explained, educational and entertaining to watch. Great stuff.
Can’t believe Varys is about to take part in the biggest season of GOT and yet he still has time to give us super high-quality space videos
Dude can teleport so it's cool.
CozyHi haha this is the comment of the month. 🤣😂🤣😂🤣🤣💀
It's LORD Varys to you peon!
😂😂😂
I've never seen got.
6 hours for one image from Jupiter from an old spacecraft like Voyager? My first reaction to that was "wow, that's still quick" :D
Sounds like surfing for... "art" back in the mid 90s. xD
Yes it took a week for the first mariner images of mars
At least the Voyagers had a tape recorders to store images, Pioneer probes X & XI had to transmit their data in real time
and its a nude.
I just turned 39 and I remember using a 300 baud modem. That's about 300bit/s on a landline. (Now I have >250Mbps on my mobile phone, so that's almost a million times faster). The fact that things have improved faster on Earth than in space, isn't that surprising. But Cool Worlds Lab have recently released a video where they talk about using the atmosphere of Jupiter to create a high-speed network in space. Really interesting.
FYI: big reason for spaceprobes still using 1980's microcontrollers and photo-sensors is that they are manufactured with bigger sized electrical components which makes them more robust against errors introduced by radiation.
Oh, thank you for this insight!
Indeed. Some newer designs (ARM architectures in particular) could be used at the larger transistor sizes, but they'd have to be clocked 1000 times slower (at best) and nifty things like branch prediction would need to be disabled for use in the interplanetary environment. Most things I know of that are out there now are using PPC (PowerPC) chips, like those used in the Apple Macintosh line during the MacOS 9.x era and early MacOS X systems.
Yup, RISC chips for the stars.
And Vidicon Cathode Ray Tube cameras are also less affected by ionizing radiation
@@Jeffrey314159 Vidicons aren't used anymore. Rad-hard CCDs are, and now even some CMOS sensors, like the STAR250 from ON Semi.
The real question is how cameras can take a video of your shirts and not immediately die from their magnificence.
Baron Black Music They have been magnificence hardened.
such a mindful comment, loved it
This^
@Jan van Coppenhagen Can you imagine what they would see in IR or UV light?
Mindblowing!
We are all just jealous. They don't sell shirts like that on this continent, let alone cameras that can capture the radiance.
I don't know what I'm more inspired by, the content of this video or his shirt.
Looks like Batik from Indonesia.
His shirt certainly caught my eye as well.
Parker Hampton rookie....us o.g's are way past that
His shirts are almost always awesome
Probably both...
*Science channel exists
Brilliant: Allow us to introduce ourselves
*this is not a diss at you Curious Droid, love your channel....but it’s true about Brilliant tho lol
Lmao
Tbh, they are worth checking out^^
But yeah, omnipresent
Way off topic, but why are so many science channels on RUclips so intellectually lazy when it comes to certain subjects or questions asked by subscribers? I have a young nephew who asked two questions in particular that we looked up online and found that although it seems that the questions have been before they have been answered in the laziest fashion possible. The first question "Why can't planes fly into space?", he understands that planes need air for lift and controlled flight and oxygen for the engines to produce thrust, as do most people. Knowing this I understood that what he really means is couldn't someone just add rockets and a reaction control system to a jet and fly into space. But as we looked online including on RUclips all we found was videos, some ridiculously longer than they need to be that said the same basic thing I said in one sentence, the need for air for lift and controlled flight and oxygen to produce thrust. None of them thought to go any farther, and think maybe there was more to the question than what a three-year-old might ask and I would like to know why? The second question he asked that baffles me that no one really answered since it seems both relevant and obvious is "Why don't electric car makers put gasoline or other fuel generators in their cars so while you drive it recharges the battery once the charge gets low and once you have a full charge shut off?". Looking that up we found a lot of things about hybrids and range extenders but nothing about the question asked? It seems that many channels go out of their way to avoid the question altogether and we can't understand why? The question is clearly about a system that is not a range extender hybrid like the BMW Rex or the Chevy Volt or the Prius nor is it about the system the Fisker Karma has where for some reason you have a gas generator that creates electricity that then powers the car when the battery charge runs out but does not recharge the batteries while driving. I am sorry this comment is so long and yes I am asking the same thing to all the science channels I come across so you are not alone, but I just do not understand why so many of them including those that do deep dives into very difficult subjects seems to treat those two questions with what can only be termed intellectual laziness?
Brilliant is actually one of those useful ads that I'm probably gonna use when I'll be able to make time for it in my overcrowded calendar :)
Very well made, informative and entertaining.
It's like to have the best science TV channel ever imagined.
Yep. This channel is really fantastic. The format, the research he does and even the way he speaks and his voice all work together so well.
Yes!! I really love this channel because it has good content and its very informative. Its not boring but its education and its interesting. It makes you CURIOUS enough to look up more stuff on the topic if you are interested. I like your voice and all for me its like listening to a fairy tale but you slightly lead me to look up more information and educate myself. And I want to and that is the best part for me because you make me curious and I want to know and educate myself because I am really interested. At least at the moment but I feel it counts more than if I am forced to learn something I don't care about.
Wow, that thing about "painting by numbers" was completely new to me, amazing.
Your channel never fails to amaze me, keep up the good work.
Yeah i never knew they did that before, quite amazing
A lot of medical imaging was done that way back in the day (I'm talking research, not clinic).
Same
Fascinating stuff. There is nothing like seeing things with your own eyes.The engineers behind all this technology are truly exceptional , it boggles the mind how their minds work. Well done !
The PR value of the images is important, however. The wonder on display to the general public gains support for the funding of the missions.
'Taking a picture of a lump of coal in moonlight while traveling faster than a bullet.' Made me laugh. Great analogy.
I didn't realize photography in space is this tricky. Very good vid.
I'm never going to hear "A 200mm wide angle lens again" lol
I was right at this part chuckling when I read your comment 🗣
1:00 the Soviets made the first deep fried image
😂 👌Luna *YEET* 👌💯
👌🌚👌
Fried in radiation. Yum
At least it wasn't a Kentucky Fried image.
Fried...wow did you get a burger with that ?
The early "Flying Spot" film scanners did not use a computer to process the image, just a slow scan long persistence monitor connected to the receiving electronics, or a wideband data logging recorder(where the image stayed on the screen for seconds or minutes allowing for the image to be built up on the screen then photographed).
The Vidicon tube (First called videcon ) was developed in 1950 by RCA for use in portable, low cost and industrial video equipment, variations on that design such as the Saticon and Nuvicon where used into the mid 1980's for broadcast SD and consumer use and until the early 1990's for HD video work.
The Imaging CCD was developed at Bell Labs in 1970 with the first color camera using 3 CCD's being developed in 1972. RCA showed a prototype broadcast CCD camera in 1980 the same year they released the first CCD based security camera, the first production broadcast 3 CCD camera was introduced in 1983. .
Yes, this technology was widely used in transmitting film-movies to television back in 1952
Hey Droid I just want to say that in last year or so I found your channel occasionally and it was very interesting. Now I subscribed and I find your channel as real quality content. Now I just love it and you do really good job! I absolutely love people that make science and education interesting and fun and that's what you do.
Definitely one of the best channels on RUclips. Keep up the excellent work. 😀
Bro, your shirt game is on point.
We got way more pictures of Uranus and Neptune than expected because during the many years the probes were en-route people back on Earth invented better compression algorithms. We then sent the algorithms to the probes which enabled them to store and send back more images than originally planned.
Yes, the far side of the moon WAS different, but NOT made out of cheese as previously thought...
There's no way Wallace and Gromit were wrong..
But I think even more interesting than the way it looks, the way the Far Side Of The Moon _sounds_ amazed us all! ^^
Don't be a sheep everyone knows the moon is made of cheese, NASA is just a cover up so that the illuminati can keep all the cheese for themselves.
@Οδοιπόρος well played, sir! ^^
Moon cheese could be a successful product. I'll give a call to Mr. Musk, maybe he's interested. He also has the boring company if we need more holes
My favorite channel on RUclips. I enjoy the nerdy minutiae about technology. I know you touched on it but how about a future video tearing into the nitty gritty of all the Soviet vanera series which I feel is under appreciated by most. Keep up the great work!
Thank you for showing how and why image quality has progressed in the last 60 years. From the 1959 image of the far side of the moon to what we see today.
That short segment of the Jupiter fly by images melted my mind... 0.o
Curious Droid, I would just like to say your videos are amazing, we have a lot of family matters to contend with right now which doesn't allow me much time to do anything, but I can always zone out to one of your vids late at night to take my mind of everything and perhaps learn new things. Thanks man 👍👍👍🏴
3:37 Mariner 4 was launched in late 1964. Its flyby of Mars took place 7.5 months later, in 1965 actually.
Correct, I was hoping someone would catch that
I liked the part about the tried camera tech. New tech does not mean good tech automaticly, it most likely means "no time yet to discover all the glitches".
Exactly. And in terms of electronics, modern CPUs are much more sensitive to radiation than older models.
Agree but glitches tech has value. New tech is great though as it pushes our knowledge even those that sort of fail - Samsung batteries catching fire etc.
However, the new tech is fine when you can either patch software, manufacture recall the item or send out service engineers with upgrades.
Obviously in general this does not apply to spacecraft millions of miles away.
The failure of the original optics in Hubble meant that clever work arounds advanced image processing massively and enhanced tech even on the corrected Hubble upgrade system.
It's strange but new camera tech is often worse. In my family for example the pics I have from the 1930s and 40s are better looking than the instamatic crap in the 70s and 80s. And when we started using cell phone cameras the quality again took a huge drop. There are always good cameras but for cost and ease of use we often pick the crappy ones to capture family photos.
@@cgaccount3669: Yes and The Twilight Zone from the sixties are much higher quality than Star Trek from the eighties. Differences are much less noticeable now though.
1 million subscribers!
Congratulations. Very well deserved.
There are now at least 1 million science enthusiasts and counting just from this channel .
Man, the classic space programs were so ingenious and brilliant in their effort to get images, I think we take it for granted now thanks to ubiquitous digital image sensors. I had no idea Lunar 3 took film images, developed it on-board (!!!), and then scanned it! That’s just amazing.
Compared to this level of work and effort, I’m sorry to say that in today’s world of bloated budgets and bellies, effort is far lower yet costlier and yet the cheerleaders are far louder.
Curious droid is one of the most in-depth and high quality historical space science channels, thank you! Reminds us all that SpaceX and their ilk truly rise on the shoulders of giants from the golden age of space programs!
13:03 Oh my god, that looks fantastic! Never seen a orbit video of another planet before.
I don't like that you had to explain what a tape recorder was. Getting old sucks. >.
My mother tould me that she had to explain what a wood stove was to the scoolchildren here... At least that's a thing even they should know without any explanation one may think...
@@Raz.C
Maye a bit off now, but i remember when i was a little kid and my sister was about five and asked my father
(i try to translate kids talk into English here so it may sound a bit arkward...)
"Dad what means "f**k off"?
(Probably heard from some songtext the older kids played in the kindergarten i guess)
(father) - Well... You will learn that in scool later...
-But DAD what does it mean??
And so on... ha ha!
Don't worry you'll be there in a nanosecond.
Look up the definition of "F**k off on dictionary.com and urban dictionary and read them out to him/her.
@@simontay4851
ha ha!
It was many, many years ago now. :)
She also asked what it ment if somoe was called "disgusting" I remember she was mad at me for several days after my very honest explanation to her... ha ha!
Well, long time ago now, but still fun memories, i recently found the remains of a swing my grandfather made when my mother was a little kid and he restored it when i was born so i could use it too, i realy must fix it for my brothers children :)
This is my best channel on RUclips. More oil in your lamp sir
I was waiting for an Uranus joke....you neatly sidestepped that one...ha
How did Voyager photograph Uranus... with a very very long lens :-)
.....waiting for the black hole joke.......😀
What does the Starship Enterprise and toilet paper have in common?
@Astro Shlibber
A black hole is not a planet, you're on the wrong video.
Most flat earthers can barely comprehend how a fast burger joint can keep up with demand, they cannot be expected to understand space exploration. Lol.
Jack D'Ripa what is your main argument to not believe in the manned Apollo missions?
@Jack D'Ripa You can skirt the worst of the Van Allen Belts, you know that right? Also, the particle radiation in the Van Allen Belts can be stopped a lot easier than gamma rays or something similar.
@Jack D'Ripa "but a man has not been landed on the moon & returned safely" Not true. Give us your best evidence.
Jack D'Ripa please answer the question. What is your argument and do you have evidence? If not then it’s just your personal opinion which is worthless.
Jack D'Ripa Good to know you agree that yours is just an opinion because you can’t provide evidence. You don’t have evidence that contractors worked blindfolded to not know what they were doing (which just shows your ignorance on how an engineering project can work) you don’t have evidence of the actual contracts and grainy images from the 60s, well just so you know HD tv is a thing that we have been using for only a few years now and most vídeo and images from the 60s ARE grainy. So that in itself is also not evidence. Do you actually have ANY real evidence?
Incredible depth and detail of research! Thank you
Excellent presentation. I particularly like the fact that you correctly separated the problems of imager resolution from those of bandwidth of the transmission channel to return images. Bandwidth falls off with the signal-to-noise ratio of the channel, and the return radio signals themselves fall off according to the "inverse square law" of physics: A signal from a probe when it's twice as far away is only 1/4 as strong, all other things being equal. So at that point, you've lost 6dB (in power terms) of your signal to noise ratio. Worse, there's potentially more trash between you and the probe, so -6dB is your *best* SNR loss number. The reality is actually even worse at the physical transmission layer, although error correction codes can, at the cost of an extra bit or two, improve things.
One thing worth mentioning is that because the imager bandwidths are higher than the bandwidth of the communications channel (and local memory is thus needed to buffer images and send them back over time), memory characteristics become critical since radiation can flip a bit and corrupt an image while it's waiting in the outbound queue. So the problem of radiation hardening becomes twofold: First the memory chips themselves can't take physical damage from some incoming cosmic ray such that they'd they become inoperable. And second, there has to be adequate error correction built into the memory such that if a bit flips without destroying the chip -- but still damaging the image -- there's a way to flip it back. Error correction codes and techniques for storing images across multiple physical memory chips provide the answer there.
Here is where human factors also, interestingly, come into the design. Most of these probes are launching with memory systems that are way out of date by modern standards for the reasons that (1) it can take a long time to do the testing on a chip to say that it is, indeed, radiation hardened to the degree required and (2) larger transistor geometries are less susceptible to radiation damage because even though the target of a single transistor on the silicon die is larger and therefore more likely to be hit, the paths out of the device for discharging the resulting electrical spike are larger. Additionally, you're somewhat less likely to generate "hot carriers" (electrons with abnormally high energy that can break down the silicon dioxide insulator at the gate of every transistor) in the device when the transistor geometry is larger. (The physics of this get a little wild and wooly, and I spent several years writing a graduate school thesis on the subject, but take my word for it...)
The result is that there are a lot of advantages to using 15-year-old DDR2 memories on these spacecraft, even when the latest and greatest memories in your home computer are now DDR4.
The "human factors" come into play for the reason that, oddly enough, some of the people designing spacecraft electronics today aren't old enough to have had to design memory systems in the bad old days of some of the technologies you now have to use. And it wasn't that long ago that I had the design of a DDR2 memory system sitting on my desk for the reason that the recent Caltech graduates working for JPL wanted an old-timer to look it over. They were all bright young engineers, but some of them were working with devices that were invented before they were born.
Fortunately enough of us hang around in the business long enough to start our own companies and employ (as I do at Focus Embedded) guys who never left engineering to go into management and whose average age is 60 or so. And people with these kinds of problems know where to find us.
The movie _Space Cowboys_ was in some ways a more accurate reflection of how the world works than you might imagine.
The video production quality Is back to how I remember when I first subscribed and not feeling like its rushed. I hope it stays that way! Thank you great job.
Didn't even know I wanted to know this stuff. Super interesting.
Pauls shirts can be seen from Space!
Thank you youtube and other science channels like Curious Droid for keeping my brain active
Your one of the best RUclips producers and my personal favorite. You have raised the bar and never fail to impress.
Curious Droid: this is how we took pictures in space.
Flat earthers: am I a joke to you?
The answer is yes, btw.
This was extremley interesting !
Thank you very much ! 😘
I love it. This whole series is of greater importance and less costly than collegiate certification. EXCELLENT, EXCELLENT, EXCELLENT.
THIS is some awesomely real information, and therefore interesting. Thank you.
Mr. Paul shillito is the best presenter . . .
Thank you for using metric units.
Hell of a lot of engineering in these space probes and that is a very good thing!
Fab video paul! Thanks for making videos which answer questions I never knew I wanted to ask!
Just for future reference, please don't even mention NASA non believers or flatearthers in your videos, this just give them more airtime and they shouldn't even be acknowledged by someone like yourself
A Carrot that’s true, just for future reference, please, he shouldn’t even mention NASA non believers or flatearthers in his videos, this just give them more airtime and they shouldn’t even be acknowledged by someone like himself
I suppose you believe Neil Armstrong was the first man to step on the moon 🙄
@@stevegraham3041 first man ye. There was a lot of activity on or near the moon before him tho. Interesting stuff
@@stevegraham3041 yes
@@stevegraham3041 I was a hoax believer in the past but it's easy to debunk if you do some basic research
Less camera pixels means bigger pixels, which means better low-light capabilities ;)
Wtf did i just read
@@shinnishi3135 If two sensors are the same size but one has fewer pixels than the other, the one with fewer pixels has bigger pixels to fill the same space. The larger surface area of the pixels makes them better at capturing light faster, meaning less motion blur in low light conditions.
@@riflemanm16a2 Nope, meaning less signal to noise ratio, meaning better image quality in low light. You can imagine this in a way that larger pixel is more sensitive to the light, or larger pixel gather more light in the same amount of time. And more light - better quality.
@@S3l3ct1ve Why "nope"? Your comment seems to agree with mine, or am I misunderstanding? Are you simply saying that the *reason* bigger pixel have better image quality in low light is different from my description, but we agree with the conclusion?
As always, a crazy interesting video with loads of stuff I didn't know. I bet with these low bandwidths, it's a tough decision of how high resolution and compression you should use on those outer planet photos. Never thought of that. I hope you never run out of material, Sir Droid.
Paul Shillito is the master of informative video. All others should pay attention.
And the shirts are icing on the cake. 😎
Fascinating as always, Paul! 2,000 bits, not bytes. Man I thought a 14.4 modem was slow!!
Thank you for maintaining your high standard of quality :-)
Agreed, there is not a single dud episode on this channel.
My favourite Curious Droid video so far, thank you for making it!
I was just searching this up and then I saw you uploaded. Now I know everything I wanted to know.
Thanks 👍
If NASA had the military budget we would be in space right now taking the pictures ourselves.
Maybe they do... I refer you to the system that Hollywood hired for the opening sequences of "Under Siege 2".
No. We’d all be speaking Japanese.
Then we would be paying that and getting exactly what we are getting now. You think we actually get our money's worth? Only time we do is when we have a true war that threatens the existence of the US. Then any con-job by a contractor would land them in prison and compromise their reputation. The rest of the time it is business as usual, fat pensions, layers and layers of contractors tripling the price of the same component each hand it goes through, 10x more employees than necessary...
With the amount we pay now, if there was accountability and not a climate of pork barrel politics, and causal government ripoff, we would easily already be there.
Watching the intro I suspect that some of the spacecraft you talk about won't be satellites.
@curious droid, thanks for acknowledging and fixing!
I was just curious about this topic and knew that Curious Droid has it somewhere in the archives. And I just stumbled upon it. So happy to see the science behind it. Droid off to 2 mil subs!
Curious Droid always puts out amazing content. I always learn something new, even on topics that I've done a lot of research on.
I remember well the fantastic excitement of the first Voyager images coming back to Earth!
Always amazed at how much continents are curved, (ie, Africa on “Blue Marble”) @ 3:16
Right school maps had me believing Greenland was almost as large as Africa
This channel is amazing, it asks&answers all the questions I had in my head as a kid.
Your uploads are the best on youtube cant wait for the next! :)
My Internet is much slower than the speed with which images were sent back to earth from voyager 2
Where at JPL is the crayon Mars image?? I want to go see that thing!
As always, thank you for your inspirational and informative videos and edifying service.
Live long and prosper.
Thanks for putting this together. Very informative and concise
Well done sir the multiple cameras we have on our cell we can thank Nasa for that !!
Ehhh.. what?
Pentti Kantanen It was NASA's work that developed the modern CCD chip into what we have now in our smartphones
@@oremooremo5075 I bet military applications (spy sats) poured a lot of cash and effort in the field.
12:27 “compared to what we are used to”
Me: *laughs in Australian internet speed*
Also me: *realises Australia invented wifi*
Also also me: *cries slowly*
Your videos are just pure gold. I like them so much and thanks again for this wonderful content Paul!
PS: I have shown your videos to many of my co-workers and they like them too :)
Great topic, well covered as always.
Really like your channel.
7.2KB/s? So about UK broadband standard
That's like ISDN max transfer speed
Download time remaining 12436732hrs
I'm on an 'up to 200 Mbps' downlink speed connection. And that is not the fastest available from this ISP. My connection speed is usually around 220 to 225 Mbps. And yes, this is in a small city in the U.K.
Download time 10 years
The average in uk is 55mbps
Magic. The answer is Magic.... ;)
Well yeah, since any sufficiently advanced technology... oh, screw this. For the next mission, just duct tape a mobile phone set to live stream on Facebook to the sat, and plug its USB charger into to nuke...
Voldemort kills Snape.
Just another fantastic video. Thanks, Paul a new video always makes my day.
This channel is amazing, thank you for your hard work!
Notified! Interesting subject, as always. Click as fast as I could!
They send an astronaut to retrieve it duh
The modern ones use WiFi, of course!
@@TheUglyGnome sending via Bluetooth? :)
Also worth mentioning that hardened electronics are extrmely expensive and "low" budget missions try to find other ways. That's why Europa clipper will have such a wide eliptical orbit arond Jupiter. Just flying by Europa once in each. And doesn't go into orbit around Europa itself which would put it into heavy radiation all of the time.
my favorite channel about space! thank you!
All of this work done, so just some flatard can deny it and say its all fake and CGI.
Cgi: exists
Flatards: tHeY uSed ThAt tO fAke SpAce
Nine flatearthers disliked this video.
Only they care about their fantasy. The rest of us appreciate the snaps taken by these technological wonders for the edification of the the layman public.
excellent! I have always wondered about the details on this topic. The power of youtube done right!
Thank you very much I love your work. I'm so inspired :-)
Curious droid is definitely underrated!
just when I think humanity is crap, I watch these sorts of clips and marvel at what can achieve when we want to. Now, I want a Mars mission and I want one NOW!!
I'm hooked watching all your videos, very awesome. You cover everything I am into, thank you.
You do great videos answering my all quiestions about space. Thank you!
Been watching this channel for a while and I’m loving it !
Oooooh, thank you so much for this beautiful, well done video!
Great video but I thought it was going to cover more about how the spacecraft transmit these images ... which I suppose is part of a bigger subject. Would be great to see an episode on spacecraft communications.
I find it hard to imagine usable radio data coming from so far away. I am fascinated by the time lags too. The story of the lunar rover camera being remote controlled from earth to take the footage of the last 3 Apollo moon ascents is an interesting story. I think they had to send the command to pan up and out some time before the ascent engines ignited so they only got it exactly right on the last mission ... something like that. Thanks for the amazing videos.
Brilliant extremely informative video! Keep up the good work, your efforts are much appreciated.
your wisdom never ceases to amaze me, this isn't a youtube channel, it's a university
Thanks you. Another great video and answers questions I had. :-)
I missed you mr. Droid .... time to switch back to you after a Scott Manley marathon
Extremely valuable and useful information. Thanks a lot. 🙏😊
Beautiful descriptions! :) As always! 😊👌🏻
What a great treatment of a very interesting question. Thank you for posting this.
Your channel is fantastic. Keep up the good work!
amazin quality, paul. as usual, LOVE IT