WEBVTT FILE

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Venus, our next frontier here at the

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Goddard Space Flight Center looking with

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Wallops we have simulated what it would

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be like to freefall descent to the

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surface of Venus with cameras that would

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allow us to see the surface from above

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for the first time in human history at

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scales that are similar to those we

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experience as we land in aircraft at

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airports here on earth and these images

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are synthetic images but actually made

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from our helicopter experiment to show

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what landscapes on Venus would look like

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if a future prober Lander were to go

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there we want to use these images to

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allow us to reconstruct what the

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landscapes of this this crazy planet are

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like so using the Wallops Flight

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Facility helicopter equipped with

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cameras viewing it nadir we simulated

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the final 2,000 meters of descent on

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Venus over a rugged quarry system with

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landscapes that are similar to those we

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find on planets like Mars and Venus and

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using a camera system like those that

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could be carried on probes we image the

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sands and the gravels and the boulders

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and the other textures that we found on

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planets as we descend it here you can

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see the rugged boulders that some of us

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feel might exist in the highlands of

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Venus we also see fields of gravels and

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conical hills that remind us of small

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volcanoes these images are collected at

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meter resolution and finer from a camera

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pointing straight down as we descend at

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about 10 meters a second to the surface

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of Venus and by taking these pictures

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and using structure from motion

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algorithms we can put them together to

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form the first ever topographic models

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of the surface of another world from

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landing and these models constructed

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from small numbers of images look like

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this colored maps of what's high and

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what slow these relief features allow us

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to depict the landscapes quantitatively

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to model their origin what's been going

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on here you see a conical Hill of gravel

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shown in yellows and greens and blues

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against a backdrop of a smooth plain we

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could see landscapes like this in the

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highlands of Venus and this is the

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quality of topography we could produce

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on any future probe or lander to Venus

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and we believe this is important for

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untangling the history of our sister

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planet and by putting the images to

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other with the topography we can make

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perspective views synthesize the views

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that we might see at the ground or as we

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climb into these hills so the team at

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Goddard Space Flight Center and Wallops

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Flight Facility conducted this

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experiment to stimulate the future

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exploration of the planet Venus in the

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2020s and beyond with a vision of using

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our eyes wide open as we descend in a

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freefall geometry to see Venus in 3d our

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next stop we believe is Venus the lost

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ocean world...