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

这个科学与社会论文改进补助金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互动。通过与火星探测漫游车（MER）团队的实地考察，该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，并在一定距离内操作漫游车。特别感兴趣的是火星车团队如何使用图像使火星可见和清晰，以及这些可视化如何告知研究人员关于行星的推断。因此，该项目构成了在当代太空探索背景下解决视觉认识论问题的基于实践的方法：也就是说，它重点关注基于火星表面视觉表示的火星知识创造的社会和技术成就。该项目将利用与康奈尔大学MER小组的实地工作，以及对加州、亚利桑那和密苏里州其他MER站点的访问，解决漫游者项目中图像分析的几个方面。宇航员的观测数据将在日常的集体图像分析活动中收集，这些活动对使命至关重要：工程师和操作经理之间的会议，以决定漫游者正在“看”什么，以及根据视觉证据，他们下一步应该做什么;科学家之间的讨论，以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值得信赖和证据，探索天文图像处理的学科和纪律活动，并讨论火星车软件工具的开发相对于跨学科研究团队的视觉语言和惯例。在整个过程中，本论文将开发和采用一个分析框架来分析科学中的理论和实践表征，并探索通过数字化工具管理视觉客观性的主题。NSF的资金将用于支持康奈尔大学、加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、采访和档案工作。该项目的智力价值在于其对科学图像研究的贡献。它专门解决了数字客观性的问题：对同时是图解和图像的，操纵和机械生产的图像的认识，实践和道德管理。此外，它带来的工具，从社会建设的科学和技术方案进入虚拟领域，解包软件套件作为社会建设和探索这样的STS概念，如铭文，不可变的手机，和外部化的视网膜在数字图像处理的背景下。最后，对理论承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，除了科学的社会研究，该项目具有更广泛的影响。作为21世纪世纪的“大科学”，漫游者被纳入了一个涉及科学家、学校和立法者的外联网络。图像在这一交流网络中发挥着核心作用，因此，作为舆论、知识和筹资战略的工具，图像值得仔细审查。密切民族志的关注，通过远程网络的视觉技术的合作，也可能揭示未来的技术发展的见解，在计算机支持的合作工作。最后，火星车的使命是一个具有历史意义的项目：对围绕其图像的日常互动进行仔细的记录和分析，这些图像是必不可少的，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.