QUESTION:
NASA used a series of images shot by the Mars Pathfinder lander to compute
some "super resolution" images. The whole world could admire four of them,
and particularly the Northern part of "Twin Peaks". (By the way, it looks
like only 20% of the image surface carries useful information; the remaining
80% being blank sky.)

Will you do the same work on the Southern part that seems very interesting
to lots of people? Everybody is waiting anxiously for it. Moreover, it would
be nice to have the whole panorama in "Super Res". It seems possible, given
the hundreds of megabytes that have already been downloaded, and the other
hundreds that are to be downloaded in the future.

ANSWER from David Mittman on September 2, 1997:
Thanks for the pointer! I believe that the super-resolution picture you are
referring to was our first. We've gotten the pointing down a bit better
since then.

The amount of data that can be downlinked has dropped off considerably since
our first month on the surface of Mars. Less Deep Space Net antenna time
allocated to Mars Pathfinder has reduced our data downlink bandwidth to a
trickle on some days.

Although the super-resolution images can provide improved detail in
certain areas, they consume a considerable amount of our limited data
downlink, and have to contend with images that contain higher priority
science data.

David Mittman
Jet Propulsion Laboratory