Welcome to the first volume from the Mars Data Project!  This is a new community effort organized by MarsNews.com to analyze raw data from Mars missions and get people excited about Mars by exploring the Red Planet from any computer.  This is our first volume in what we hope is a periodical series of CD-ROMs with real data from Mars, scientific articles, and the software & know-how to create great-looking Mars images.

You can begin using this CD-ROM by browsing the content in the Main Menu and perhaps installing some of the software you will need to view and process the images & data.  The first thing you'll need is some type of image processing program, and we have included several -- Paint Shop Pro for Windows, NIH Image for Macintosh, and the GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) for Unix & Windows.  We've also included the Comb2 filter software to perform de-streaking on the images from Mars Global Surveyor.  Also available to install is  NASAView, the official NASA image viewing software and the only way to view images in NASA's proprietary IMG, IMQ, and QUB formats.  Make sure your computer is set up to open those file types using NASAView.  Perhaps your Web Browser or Paint Shop Pro could be configured to open the standard GIF & JPG formats.  Other viewers are available on the CD-ROM for PDF, Word, and PowerPoint files.

When you're ready to browse the raw data from Mars, visit the Data Index pages for the three Mars missions we're highlighting on this volume.  The Data Indexes have clickable file listings and also highlight areas of interest in the data.  Missions also have sub-indexes focusing on specific regions.  You can also browse the data by using your computer's native filesystem -- on Windows PCs you would start Windows Explorer, click on "My Computer", then your CD-ROM drive.  The CD-ROM's filesystem is arranged logically, and data from each mission, software, and articles can be found in the appropriate places.

For every CD-ROM released by the Mars Data Project, we will focus on specific regions or missions.  For Volume One, we are highlighting Cydonia (home of the "Face on Mars"), Valles Marineris, Olympus Mons, the moon Phobos, and the "Inca City", a strange rectilinear region near the south pole on Mars.  So you'll notice that most of the data from the orbiter missions is of those areas.  We also have most of the landing site panoramas from Mars Pathfinder (those are some of my favorites!) 

Along with the raw data & images, we've included a selection of scientific articles & how-to articles on processing raw data.  We also have a great set of Special Reports from MarsNews.com.  But this is just the start, and we want to maintain our momentum by providing new reports and articles submitted by the Mars Data Project community.  If you have an article you'd like to submit to us, we'd like to host your article on the MDP Website and/or include your article in future volumes of the CD-ROM series. 

We've put a lot of work into this CD-ROM, but this is only the beginning.  We hope to release another volume with raw data from Mars in the next few months, and we can use your assistance in deciding what regions to focus on and what images, articles, and software to include.  We'd like to include content like a Mars atlas, a virtual reality tour of a Mars base, and more data from Pathfinder, MGS, and Odyssey.  Odyssey in particular will have more raw data released by the time the next CD-ROM is ready, so it will be our primary data supplier for the Mars Data Project.  Later on, we will have a comprehensive preview of the 2003 Mars Exploration Rovers, Mars Express, and Nozomi, all of which will (hopefully) be arriving at Mars in December 2003.

I'd like to thank you personally for purchasing this volume as it will assist us in our mission to educate and inform the public and pave the way for future volumes of the Mars Data Project CD-ROMs.  Please join the Project's Discussion Group on Yahoo! Groups to help us out.  Our hope is that this new effort called the Mars Data Project will advance humanity's understanding of the Red Planet and help to pave the way for the eventual human exploration of Mars.

Thanks and Enjoy!