Gale Crater, Mars

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This Is A Model Of Gale Crater, Where The Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Is Roving Around And Blasting Holes In The Landscape. It'S 1:1925000 Scale. The Curiosity Rover Would Be About Two Microns Long, Or About The Length Of One E. Coli Cell. There Is Already A Model Of Gale Crater On Thingiverse (See Thing:28190 By Neurothing, And Its Derived Thing:28619 By Doomcow), But I Suspect The Data They Used To Create The Heightmap Is Not Simple Elevation Data. Also, The Way They Did The Mesh Simplification Resulted In A Model Without A Flat Bottom. I Loved Their Idea, But I Decided To Start Over. I Wanted To Be Sure I Was Capturing The Actual Topography Of The Crater Rather Than Some Other Optical Property, And So I Used The Survey Data From The Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (Mola) Topography Experiment Aboard The Mars Global Surveyor. The Data Is Available Here : Http://Www.Mapaplanet.Org/Explorer/Help/Data_Set.Html#Mars_Mgs_Mola_Topo I Then Squelched The Grayscale Image To Range From 0-200, And Used Vincent Sanders' Png23D Tool To Create An Stl File : Http://Kyllikki.Github.Com/Png23D/ I Then Used Meshlab To Apply A Quadratic Edge Collapse Decimation, Reducing The Face Count From 779300 To 10000 (Preserving Mesh Boundaries And Topography). Http://Meshlab.Sourceforge.Net/ This Should Be Easier To Print And More Accurate. I'Ve Printed Two Versions So Far, Both With Cura : Https://Github.Com/Daid/Cura The Print Shown In The Photos Is Actually A "Low" Quality Print. The "Normal" Quality Print Came Out Even Better. -- Update -- I Printed A Copy Of This Model On Our Lab'S Ultimaker, And Gave It To Dawn Sumner. She Is A Co-Investigator For The Msl Camera Team Led By Malin Space Science Systems, One Of The Long Term Planners (Ltps) For The Mission. She'S Also Co-Chair Of The Mapping Group. Dawn Was On The Landing Site Working Group, And Helped Choose Gale Crater As The Landing Site For The Curiosity Rover. Http://Mygeologypage.Ucdavis.Edu/Sumner/Dawns_Research/Home.Html If Figured It Was Only Fair That She Get My First Print, Especially Since She'S Also At Uc Davis. Here'S Her Post On Twitter About The Print : Https://Twitter.Com/Sumnerd/Status/245937514752405504

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