NASA to use lightfield cameras on future missions

The American space agency NASA will probably use lightfield cameras on future missions, where employees can adjust the focus after taking the picture. The cameras would be used for missions to other planets.

The NASA organization Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is responsible for missions such as the Curiosity rover to Mars, is working with Lytro tools on cameras for upcoming missions. Lytro, known for its lightfield cameras, says so in a message about its Platform, which makes the technology behind its lightfield cameras available to other companies and organizations.

With the use of the lightfield cameras, NASA probably wants to make it possible to see objects in images from unmanned rovers that were originally out of focus, in order to extract more information from the images. Thanks to the lightfield cameras, users can bring all objects, both near and far, into focus afterwards.

Lytro itself has already released two cameras based on the lightfield technology, but now wants to make money by offering the Lytro Platform to other companies for a fee.