The facsimile camera - Its potential as a planetary lander imaging system

The facsimile camera is an optical-mechanical scanning device which is an attractive candidate for planetary lander imaging systems and has been selected for the Viking/Mars mission because of its light weight, small size, and low power requirement. Other advantages are that it can provide good radiometric and photogrammetric accuracy because the complete field of view is scanned with a single photodetector located on or near the optical axis of the objective lens. In addition, this device has the potential capability of multispectral imaging and spectrometric measurements.