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Described as sharp, detailed and spectacular, the first images of Mars from the UA's HiRISE camera arrived early Friday to a thrilled scientific team set to examine the red planet in unprecedented detail.

The $40 million camera, aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, captured pictures from an orbit about 1,500 miles above the planet, less than two weeks after the spacecraft executed the difficult maneuver known as orbit insertion.

Though they're test images from high altitude with less-than-ideal lighting conditions, the pictures contain interesting elements of the martian surface, said Alfred McEwen, a professor in the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and the leader of HiRISE, the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment.

"They're great images," McEwen said. "They're what all of us were hoping for — better than some people were expecting."

Perhaps more important, the images reassured the team that the camera is functioning properly and offered an opportunity to calibrate the instrument. "It's great these images turned out well because a lot of things had to work right, including exactly how the spacecraft points and the stability," McEwen said. "It turned out just right."

The camera will take a few more pictures today and another round in late September and early October, but the bulk of the images won't be taken until November, when the spacecraft reaches its final orbit about 190 miles above Mars.

The first images show detail of Mars at 2.5 meters per pixel, while the final low-orbit images will show detail at 0.28 meters per pixel — able clearly to show objects less than 40 inches wide from an altitude of nearly 200 miles. The orbiter will circle the planet about 13 times a day.

McEwen has characterized the camera's operation as analogous to photographing grains of sand along a highway while driving 120 mph.

The images show some interesting elements of the martian surface, including a debris mantle that could offer clues to the composition and properties of the surface and some fine detail on small, fresh craters.

"These are random targets, and they don't hit what we know are the greatest areas of interest on Mars," McEwen said. The first views cover a section of Mars roughly 31 by 12 miles, in the mid-latitude southern highlands.

An old crater is in the center of the picture, with channels to the right and left.

A much younger, layered mantel of debris is seen in parts of the terrain, and some rough areas may suggest the area had water ice, carbon dioxide ice or both.

Also visible are several small, sharp-rimmed impact craters and wind-blown dunes.

HiRISE is one of six scientific instruments on the orbiter, which will study Mars at the surface, subsurface and atmospheric levels, expanding on a series of water-related discoveries made during previous Mars missions.

When its in the main part of its scientific mission, HiRISE will target specific areas of the martian surface, including a search for potential landing sites for the UA's Phoenix mission, which launches in 2007.

HiRISE, the most powerful camera to leave Earth's orbit, will take ultra-sharp photographs that cover 3.5-mile-wide swaths of the martian landscape, returning images with a 20,000-by-60,000 pixel resolution.

During the 25-month mission, the HiRISE team will process about 10,000 of the large, high-resolution images.

Built by Colorado's Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., the camera weighs 145 pounds, with a 20-inch primary mirror.

On StarNet View a slide show of the latest HiRISE images, and learn more about the Orbiter and its mission at azstarnet. com/science