Photo-realistic Terrain Modeling and Visualization for Mars Exploration Rover Science Operations

Modern NASA planetary exploration missions employ complex systems of hardware and software managed by large teams of engineers and scientists in order to study remote environments. The most complex and successful of these recent projects is the Mars Exploration Rover mission. The Computational Sciences Division at NASA Ames Research Center delivered a 3D visualization program, Viz, to the MER mission that provides an immersive, interactive environment for science analysis of the remote planetary surface. In addition, Ames provided the Athena Science Team with high-quality terrain reconstructions generated with the Ames Stereo-pipeline. The on-site support team for these software systems responded to unanticipated opportunities to generate 3D terrain models during the primary MER mission. This paper describes Viz, the Stereo-pipeline, and the experiences of the on-site team supporting the scientists at JPL during the primary MER mission.