Chris Schaller
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hicommander.bsky.social
Chris Schaller
@hicommander.bsky.social
1.7K followers 1K following 1.1K posts
Software Developer, Planetary Image Research Lab, UArizona LPL - MRO/HiRISE & TGO/CaSSIS GDS - he/him/his.
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hicommander.bsky.social
Pima County AZ has a nice one.
The Pima County, Arizona, "I Voted" sticker, with "I Voted" (English), "A:ñi 'ant wodalt" (O'odham), and "Yo Voté" (Spanish) written along with the hashtag "#PimaCountyVotes." The graphic design shows several different species of cactus from the area. (Apologies, a screen reader is probably going to mess up the pronunciation of the O'odham phrase.)
November 4, 2025 at 3:24 PM
hicommander.bsky.social
Haha, I really did forget about Jupiter. Sheesh. Lookit!

www.uahirise.org/releases/jup...
The nearly full disk of Jupiter, with its belts of color and the Great Red Spot, albeit not quite red with HiRISE. Io, I think, is also in this sub-image.
October 21, 2025 at 5:39 AM
hicommander.bsky.social
It was 20 years ago today… ULA's AV-007 launches from Cape Canaveral Space Launch Complex 41 with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and your favorite space camera, HiRISE.
An Atlas-V rocket launching from its launch complex in Florida. There's a body of water (a canal or something like that) in the mid ground, with the launch complex is the background. The rocket is a second or two off the pad, maybe 800-1000 feet in the air. A cloud of vapor has engulfed the pad below it; the Atlas V assembly building is off to the right side of the frame. There's a small, bright flare from the rocket motor as climbs.
August 12, 2025 at 2:40 PM
hicommander.bsky.social
I see your video game walk thru and raise you a spacecraft reference frame ASCII diagram embedded in the definition file used on the ground for navigation and pointing. I consult diagrams like this a couple of times a month.
A screenshot of an ascii diagram showing the base reference frame for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter; the diagram defines the various axes and lays out a rough sketch of the bus and subsystems. It shows the positive Z-axis as the one nominally pointing at Mars. The locations of the HiRISE instrument, the high-gain antenna (HGA), solar arrays (SAPX [solar array positive X] and SAMX [solar array minus X]) are illustrated, as is the nominal direction of flight.
July 15, 2025 at 3:29 PM
hicommander.bsky.social
I should of course provide a pic of it.
A cupcake on a plastic plate. The cupcake is decorated with frosting that looks VERY MUCH like a miniature cactus; there are toasted coconut crumbles added to look like desert soil.
April 8, 2025 at 9:06 PM
hicommander.bsky.social
Nice Cassis image here.
A tabby cat sitting on a bed. She's looking off-camera to the right. Her ears are backlit by the sun and are kind of glowing, as are her whiskers.
March 4, 2025 at 5:13 PM
hicommander.bsky.social
And then all that stuff on the ground, viewed from MRO/HiRISE 275 km/170 miles up, one day later.
An image of the surface of Mars showing the Mars 2020 "Perseverance" landing hardware and rover on the ground as view from 275 km/170 miles above. The scene shows the heat shield, the parachute and back shell, the landing stage, and the rover all on the ground as they should be.
February 18, 2025 at 4:16 PM
hicommander.bsky.social
Same view, from MRO/HiRISE 700 km/435 miles away, in space. An awful lot of talented engineers and scientists made this happen.

www.uahirise.org/ESP_068281_9...
An image taken from Mars orbit by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE camera showing the Mars 2020 "Perseverance" rover as it descends through Mars's atmosphere. The background is the Martian surface, with an inset highlighting the rover's landing package and parachute.
February 18, 2025 at 4:10 PM
hicommander.bsky.social
Cassis says Hi!
A tabby cat sitting in my lap. The image close on her face—her cheek and eyebrow whiskers are sticking out like an old man's, but it's very cute on her.
December 10, 2024 at 5:39 PM
hicommander.bsky.social
The cat thermometer says it's finally cool enough outside to jump onto my chair within seconds of my standing up.
A tabby cat with a white fur belly lies on her side on my chair. She is not looking at the camera, but just to the side of it.
October 23, 2024 at 1:16 AM
hicommander.bsky.social
It's officially the first day of Fall in the northern hemisphere and Cassis is back on her bullshit once more, hopping up onto my chair the moment I stand up.
A tabby cat with a white belly and legs is lying on her side on my black comfy desk chair, which I would like to sit in. She is looking away from the camera.
September 22, 2024 at 3:03 PM
hicommander.bsky.social
Almost an Arizona zip code.
The Bluesky celebratory badge for 10 million users, indicating I was 86,308 and am a "certified elder." Join date is May 22, 2023.
September 16, 2024 at 11:30 PM
hicommander.bsky.social
If you color-invert their color inversion of our image, it's clearer. You can more easily match the floor dunes and crater rim details to the original. (And we love to see our images used like this, by the way!)
A frame from the Star Trek Discovery title sequence showing the HiRISE image of Victoria Crater. It's a color-inverted image of a color-inverted image, so the crater rim and crater floor look correct and the details are more easily matched to the actual image. This one is a blue color because I inverted the sepia/orange version from the Discovery titles. The fictional Discovery spaceship silhouette and ground shadow are visible here, as are the pseudo hand-drawn scribbled notes.
September 11, 2024 at 9:32 PM
hicommander.bsky.social
Aside from our image of Victoria Crater being stunning on its own, it made its way into the title sequence for Star Trek Discovery. They color-inverted it for the sequence, but it's definitely our Victoria image.
A screen capture of the Star Trek Discovery title sequence showing the HiRISE image of Victoria Crater on Mars in an orange-sepia color. A silhouette of the Discovery ship is shown flying over the crater, its shadow cast on the ground. The image has been color-inverted, so the crater looks like a mound. Several pseudo-hand-written notes have been added to the scene to map it look like an old map or a figure from an old scientific journal.
September 11, 2024 at 9:22 PM
hicommander.bsky.social
Cassis has declared my meeting is adjourned.
A close-up selfie of a napping tabby cat in my arms. My face is peeking out over her back.
February 26, 2024 at 7:05 PM
hicommander.bsky.social
This one (file photo) hit me with her "why were you gone so long" meow when I got home tonight. It's very sad, very pitiful, very heartbreaking, and very adorable. Extra treats for Cassis tonight.
Closeup picture of a tabby cat's face, taking up most of the frame. She's not sad in this pic, just pouty because she's pouty sometimes.
February 7, 2024 at 1:56 AM
hicommander.bsky.social
My security officer is inspecting our new card-reader dongle.
A tabby cat is sitting upright on an office chair. She is sniffing a plastic-wrapped package containing a new USB personal identify verification card-reader dongle.
February 1, 2024 at 2:06 PM
hicommander.bsky.social
Hey, lookit that. Margo has a real HiRISE image hanging in her office in the season 4 finale of For All Mankind. Here's the image so you can print it out and hang it in your office, too! www.uahirise.org/ESP_026051_2...
A photograph of my TV during the season 4 finale of "For All Mankind." It shows one of the main characters, Margo, in her office; behind her is a framed image of a giant dust devil on Mars, as really captured by the HiRISE camera in 2012.
January 13, 2024 at 4:10 AM
hicommander.bsky.social
No. Absolutely not. I'm sorry you have to experience this, but if I had to, then so do you.
A screen shot of a Facebook video in which a person of dubious taste has added fist-sized plastic molded teeth to her toilet, so that the lid looks like a gaping, open, toothy mouth. She's added a string of red LED lights just under the rim of the toilet bowl, too, so it lights up like a hell-maw in the night. A caption reads "Creative toilet transformations to impress your guests."
October 17, 2023 at 11:21 PM
hicommander.bsky.social
I'm sad to report that my end-of-day gambit yesterday failed. The code did not magically appear overnight, and I have some work to do this morning.
Screen shot of some Perl code in a text editor. The first line says "use exporter qw (for quote word) import," to start configuring the module. The next line is a code comment that reads "code magically appears here..."
October 12, 2023 at 3:56 PM
hicommander.bsky.social
Cassis is enjoying this new twitter alternative this morning. (h/t @katskitties.bsky.social for the channel recommendation!)
A tabby cat sitting right in front of a TV screen, watching a video of birds in a cage. The cat is sitting on the very dusty sound bar and has left lots of little paw prints all over it.
July 11, 2023 at 3:13 PM
hicommander.bsky.social
Cassis is having a moment here. Did she leave the oven on?
A tabby cat sitting upright on her butt on a pile of bed sheets. She has a far-off expression on her face.
July 7, 2023 at 1:16 AM
hicommander.bsky.social
Cassis, chilling.
A tabby cat curled up at the top of a cat tower, on her side, her rear legs and tail dangling over the side.
May 23, 2023 at 5:55 AM