Starship Asterisk*

The flyover basically amounts to eye candy, but the data it was constructed from is not.

The rover crew creates 3-D surface models to help navigate the rovers. It gives a much better view of the land and potential routes and science targets than 2-D pictures. It also provides hints about the geological past on a scale above and beyond what the rover cameras can generate. It's not quite as good as being there, but it helps bridge the gap between the pictures and the reality.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080519.html

Personally; I liked the film. It was like really flying over the terrain. Was that a natural cave on the side of the hill? It may be candy, as it was enjoyable; but was also observational as well. I liked how it spotted the rover on the surface.
Orin

Very nice and well-done. The feeling of flying over the terrain at low altitude was exceptional.

However, I see low-res movies like this as more entertainment and eye-candy than as anything having real scientific or educational value. (I realize that high-res movies would be prohibitive from a bandwidth point of view.) Movies are well-suited to present things that are dynamic (e.g., changes in a feature due to erosion).

My personal preference would be to see high-res still images of interesting features that are explained or which contain "stuff" that are not explained but are speculated about.

That having been said, there is room in APOD for both eye-candy/entertainment and for educational/informative stuff as well.

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