HiPredict: Predicting the missing HiRISE RED4 spectral channel with machine learning

Ardan Suphi, Ben Moseley, Gareth S Collins, Valentin T Bickel, Vidhya G Rangarajan

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) acquires imagery of Mars at 25--30 cm/pixel, supporting studies of martian geology, climate history, and landing-site characterization. Its 14-detector focal plane assembly includes several overlapping detectors that enable the acquisition of three-channel colour-infrared images, which are important for identifying compositional variations and studying active surface processes. In 2023, a detector in the center of the focal plane assembly (RED4) began failing intermittently, creating a gap in acquired imagery and reducing the instrument's colour-imaging capability by half. The HiRISE processing pipeline provides a synthetic red (SYN4) channel obtained by linearly scaling the co-located infrared (IR10) channel. However, this approach cannot capture observed non-linear relationships between the colour channels, limiting its accuracy and applicability. Here, we present HiPredict, a machine-learning framework that reconstructs RED4 from co-located IR10 and blue-green (BG12) imagery, neighbouring red-channel observations, and acquisition metadata. The model employs a U-Net…