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NeonsStyle t1_ixslyk5 wrote

They look like infrared images. Probably looking for signs of water ice in the darkest parts of craters that never see the sun.

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MrSparklessparkles t1_ixsm86s wrote

Be patient. The images and video we're seeing are throttled by the limited DSN downlink. NASA's recording higher resolution stuff that will be accessible after splashdown.

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LaunchTransient t1_ixsma4r wrote

These are images from Orion's navigation cameras. They're great for getting your bearings, but they're not the top tier surface imaging cameras such as those used on the LRO.

>I don't believe Nasa installed a camera with a fixed aperture, completely non-adjustable

If you want something for figuring out your vehicle's orientation and position in space, that's exactly what you want. Now, I agree that the cameras onboard aren't the best, but this is a technology demonstrator mission, not a "lets map the moon in 12K sharp quality" mission.

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PerfectPercentage69 t1_ixsmezu wrote

Replying to NeonsStyle (#676,376)

That's a photo captured by the Orion's optical navigation camera. Overexposure is needed to see the stars more clearly.

OP is complaining that cameras designed to track stars to calculate position/orientation/etc. is not good at capturing images of the surface of the Moon. So it must be some NASA conspiracy! lol

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Absoluticus t1_ixsmnvd wrote

I'm sure it's in some mission statement somewhere, but I can imagine the data network is concentrated on the dummies and capsule data. They can get all the HD videos/photos after splashdown instead of wasting bandwidth on tertiary data.

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WictImov t1_ixsn596 wrote

  1. These are not the final images we will see, just what has been priortized on the downlink.
  2. There are a couple of dozen camera's on Orion, we are only seeing images from a limited few of them.
  3. Sunlight in space (and on the Lunar surface) is very harsh. Even on Earth, photographers like to take images at dawn and dusk for a reason but even noontime sunlight is filtered by a lot of atmosphere and reflections from the landscape. The sunlight hitting Orion has no filter at all, so expect them to be very high contrast.
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PhoenixReborn t1_ixsodbk wrote

Replying to NeonsStyle (#676,376)

No, these are from the navigation camera. Basically doing the same thing as the star tracking cameras. High contrast is good and makes it easier for the computer to get it's bearings, but it doesn't make very pretty photos. There are other satellites looking for ice.

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headcheaufer t1_ixsr8k4 wrote

They moon has almost no color, just grey tones with a few exceptions (it actually turns out that the moon is closer to black than to white. I have seen it compared to a charcoal briquette. The sun is so bright, though, that it looks white against the dark sky). We flew color cameras to the moon on GRAIL in 2012 and got the same complaint about black and white photos.

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IAlreadyFappedToIt t1_ixsuuqq wrote

Imagine looking at one photo online and deciding that you could have done a Lunar recon mission better than NASA.

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No_Leader1154 t1_ixv6avb wrote

Devil’s advocate here but I see OPs point. There’s higher res images from mars. There’s absolutely no argument for such low quality images in this day and age, save for the IR or navigation camera bit. Even still, I do not believe documenting this could have less precedence than a simple vehicle test. This is the Apollo 8 of Orion.

Source: I have a digital imaging degree and a degree in aerospace

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NeonsStyle t1_iy2w3eh wrote

If it were navigation caneras it wouldn't be taking hi res images of the moon surface. The goals of Artemis is to.put nan on the moon permanently. You need water for that. It's known in the polar craters in permanent shadow have water ice in them. This is why it's such high contras.

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