James Cameron takes 3D camera to Mars

Should take Celine Dion too...

Oscar winning director James Cameron is helping NASA develop a high-resolution 3D camera for the next Mars rover, Curiosity.

Cameron, who spent a fortune doing underwater archaeology on the wreck of the Titanic, has made a fortune out of the 3D flick Avatar and, according to the Associated Press, thinks that the great unwashed will better understand the Mars mission if the rover has 3D imaging capabilities.

The Curiosity project is supposed to launch later next year and budget overruns had forced NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to rethink plans to mount a 3D cam on the payload.

But Cameron apparently has convinced NASA administrator Charles Bolden that it wasn't a good idea to drop the 3D camera, as he thinks that people will understand the whole project better if they can see it in 3D.

After all it worked well to rescue a fairly lame plot on Avatar.

Plus, if the Mars probe does find aliens it will be possible to see them coming right at you.

Currently the plan is to work on a 34mm fixed focal length flight camera. The Mastcams will be used to image the area around Curiosity as well as the distant horizon.

For Avatar, Cameron and colleagues developed a lightweight 3D digital camera system, the Fusion Camera System, so he knows a bit about it all.

However our hope is that the director who inflicted Celine Dion on the world will do us all a favour and use his influence to strap her to the bonnet of the probe as it prepares to lift off towards Mars. If we can't fire her into the heart of the sun the next best thing will be to send her on the next space probe off the planet.