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

本科学与社会论文改进基金将分析数字图像在当代行星天文学中的应用，关注研究人员与图像和成像物体的个人和协作互动。通过与火星探测漫游者（MER）团队的实地考察，该研究将开发一个详细的案例研究，研究如何使用图像来得出科学结论，并在远距离操作漫游者。特别令人感兴趣的是，“漫游者”团队如何利用图像使火星清晰可见，以及这些可视化图像如何为研究人员对这颗行星的推断提供信息。因此，该项目是对当代空间探索背景下的视觉认识论问题的一种基于实践的方法：也就是说，它侧重于根据火星表面的视觉表现来获得关于火星的知识的社会和技术成就。通过与康奈尔大学火星探测器团队的实地考察，以及对加利福尼亚州、亚利桑那州和密苏里州其他火星探测器站点的访问，该项目将解决“漫游者”项目中图像分析的几个方面。参与观察的数据将在对任务至关重要的日常小组图像分析活动中收集：工程师和运营经理之间的会议，决定漫游者正在“观察”什么，以及基于视觉证据，下一步应该做什么；以及科学家之间的讨论，以确定一张照片是否构成火星上曾经有水的图像证据。该项目将火星车置于火星成像和想象的更大历史背景下，探索原始图像如何成为可信和证据，探索天文图像处理的学科和学科活动，并讨论火星车软件工具的开发，以及跨学科研究团队的视觉语言和惯例。在整个过程中，论文将开发并采用一个分析框架来分析科学中充满理论和实践的表现，并探索通过数字工具管理的视觉客观性主题。NSF的资金将支持康奈尔大学、加州帕萨迪纳的喷气推进实验室、亚利桑那州和密苏里州的卫星探测器实验室、试验场和图像处理中心的人种学野外工作、访谈和档案工作。这个项目的智力价值在于它对科学中图像研究的贡献。它专门解决了数字客观性的问题：同时是图解和图形，操纵和机械生产的图像的认知，实践和道德管理。此外，它将科技项目的社会建构工具带入虚拟领域，将软件套件作为社会建构进行拆解，并在数字图像处理的背景下探索诸如铭文、不可变移动设备和外化视网膜等STS概念。最后，对理论负载表征的分析也具有广泛的潜在应用于其他科学图像的社会和历史研究。然而，在科学社会研究之外，该项目具有更广泛的影响。作为21世纪的“大科学”，漫游者号加入了一个包括科学家、学校和立法者在内的扩展网络。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、知识和筹资策略的工具，值得密切和仔细的审查。通过视觉技术密切关注远程网络上的协作，也可能揭示计算机支持的合作工作中未来技术发展的见解。最后，漫游者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，作为必不可少的，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.