Dissertation Research: J. Vertesi: Images in Interaction: The Practical Use of Visual Technologies in the Mars Exploration Rover Mission

这篇科学和社会论文改进赠款将分析数字图像在当代行星天文学中的使用，关注研究人员与图像和成像对象的个人和协作交互。通过与火星探测车(MER)团队的实地工作，这项研究将开发一个详细的案例研究，说明如何使用图像来得出科学结论，并远程操作火星车。特别令人感兴趣的是火星车团队如何使用图像使火星变得可见和可读，以及这些可视化如何为研究人员提供关于该行星的推断。因此，该项目构成了在当代空间探索背景下解决视觉认识论问题的一种以实践为基础的方法：即，它侧重于以火星表面的视觉表现为基础的关于火星的知识的社会和技术成就。在康奈尔大学MER团队的实地考察和对加利福尼亚州、亚利桑那州和密苏里州其他MER站点的访问的基础上，这个项目将解决Rover项目中图像分析的几个方面。参与者-观察数据将在每日小组图像解剖活动中收集，这些活动对任务至关重要：工程师和操作经理之间的会议，以决定漫游者正在‘观察’什么，以及根据视觉证据，他们下一步应该做什么；以及科学家之间的讨论，确定图像是否构成火星上曾经有水的图像证据。将火星车置于火星成像和想象的更大历史背景下，该项目将探索原始图像如何变得可信和有证据，探索天文图像处理的学科和纪律活动，并讨论与跨学科研究团队的视觉语言和惯例有关的火星车软件工具的开发。在整个过程中，论文将开发和使用一个分析框架来分析充满理论和实践的科学表征，并探索视觉客观性这一主题，因为它是通过数字工具管理的。NSF的资金将支持康奈尔大学、加利福尼亚州帕萨迪纳的喷气推进实验室以及亚利桑那州和密苏里州的卫星漫游者实验室、试验场和图像处理中心的人种学实地工作、访谈和档案工作。该项目的学术价值在于它对科学中图像的研究做出了贡献。它具体解决了数字客观性的问题：对图像的认知、实用和道德管理，同时是图表和图像、操纵和机械产生的图像。此外，它还将科学技术程序的社会建构工具带入虚拟领域，将软件套件拆解为社会建构，并在数字图像处理的背景下探索STS概念，如铭文、不变的流动和外化的视网膜。最后，理论表征的分析对其他科学图像的社会和历史研究也具有广泛的应用潜力。然而，除了科学的社会研究，该项目还有更广泛的影响。作为21世纪的“大科学”，火星车加入了一个由科学家、学校和立法者组成的外展网络。图像在这个交流网络中发挥着核心作用，因此作为公众舆论、知识和筹资战略的工具，值得密切和仔细地审查。通过视觉技术对远程网络上的协作进行密切的人种学关注，也可能揭示计算机支持的合作工作中未来的技术发展。最后，火星车任务是一个具有历史意义的项目：仔细记录和分析围绕其图像的日常互动，作为重要的、但短暂的数字文物，为早期数字时代的发展历史做出了巨大贡献。

This Science and Society Dissertation Improvement Grant will analyze the use of digital images in contemporary planetary astronomy, paying attention to researchers' individual and collaborative interactions with images and imaged objects. Through fieldwork with the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) team, the research will develop a detailed case study of how images are used to develop scientific conclusions, and to operate the Rover at a distance. Of specific interest is how the Rover team uses images to make Mars visible and legible, and how these visualizations inform the researchers' inferences about the planet. The project thus constitutes a practice-based approach to questions of visual epistemology in the context of contemporary space exploration: that is, it focuses on the social and technical achievement of knowledge-making about Mars based on visual representations of its surface. Drawing on fieldwork with the MER team at Cornell University, and visits to other MER sites in California, Arizona and Missouri, this project will address several aspects of image analysis in the Rover project. Participant-observation data will be collected at daily group image dissection activities which are essential to the mission: meetings between engineers and operations managers to decide what the Rovers are 'looking at' and what, based on the visual evidence, they should do next; and discussions among scientists which determine whether or not an image constitutes pictorial evidence that there was once water on Mars. Situating the Rovers within a larger historical context of Martian imaging and imagining, the project will explore how raw images become trustworthy and evidentiary, probe the disciplinary and disciplining activity of astronomical image processing, and discuss the development of the Rover's software tools with respect to the visual languages and conventions of the interdisciplinary research team. Throughout, the dissertation will develop and employ an analytical framework for analyzing theory- and practice-laden representation in science, and explore the theme of visual objectivity as it is managed through digital tools. NSF funding will support ethnographic field work, interviews, and archival work at Cornell, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and satellite Rover laboratories, test sites, and image processing centers in Arizona and Missouri. The intellectual merit of the project is in its contribution to the study of images in science. It specifically addresses the problem of digital objectivity: the epistemic, practical and moral management of images that is simultaneously diagrammatic and pictorial, manipulated and mechanically produced. Further, it brings tools from social construction of science and technology programs into the virtual sphere, unpacking software suites as social constructions and exploring such STS concepts as inscriptions, immutable mobiles, and the externalized retina in the context of digital image processing. Finally, the analysis of theory laden representation also possesses broad potential application to other social and historical studies of images in science. Beyond the Social Studies of Science, however, the project has a broader impact. As twenty-first century 'big science', the Rovers are plugged into an outreach network involving scientists, schools and legislators. Images play a central role in this network of exchange and thus deserve close and careful scrutiny as instruments of public opinion, knowledge, and funding strategies. Close ethnographic attention to collaboration over distant networks by means of visual technologies may also reveal insights for future technological developments in Computer-Supported Co-operative Work. Finally, the Rover mission is a project of historic significance: the careful documentation and analysis of daily interactions around its images as essential, yet ephemeral, digital artifacts presents a strong contribution to a developing history of the early digital era.