James Cameron Convinces NASA On A 3-D Camera To Shoot Mars [Rover Curiosity To Be Equipped With The 3-D Camera For A Possible Mars Documentary]

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When you think of NASA and space exploration, James Cameron probably won’t come to your mind. After directing Avatar, the highest-grossing movie of all time, it looks like Cameron wants to put his 3-D camera to use for the next Mars exploration.

The Oscar-winning filmmaker James Cameron has somehow managed to convince the folks at NASA to install a high-resolution 3-D camera on Curiosity, the next generation Mars rover set to launch in 2011.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory that’s creating the rover Curiosity initially wasn’t open to Cameron’s idea. The Mars project is already over-budget and behind schedule.

Cameron lobbied hard for the idea directly to NASA administrator Charles Bolden in a meeting held earlier this year in January. Cameron expressed that Bolden was “really open to the idea” and that the first meeting “went very well.”

The meeting went so well that NASA purchased a 3-D camera for Curiosity, although a mast camera without 3-D capabilities had already been delivered to JPL this month. The team isn’t sure if the new 3-D camera will be ready in time, which is currently being built by San Diego-based Malin Space Science Systems. Nevertheless, the crew at JPL are all excited about the possibilities.

Joy Crisp, JPL deputy project scientist on the project claims that the camera could film at 10 frames per second. She states that, “You could take a movie and image clouds moving in the sky or a dust devil moving.”

Cameron’s successful sci-fi movie Avatar is highly regarded for its panoramic and realistic 3-D effects. It has amazed millions of movie-watchers worldwide and has earned more than 2.7 billion dollars.

No specific details are given on the purpose of this NASA 3-D project. Rumor has it that it might be a 3-D documentary on the planet Mars as Cameron states the scientists are “going to answer a lot of really important questions about the previous and potential future habitability of Mars.”

Cameron is considered a co-investigator for the 3-D mast camera and announces that, “It’s a thrill to be on even a tiny part of the mission. It’s a very ambitious mission. It’s a very exciting mission.”

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